Editor’s note (Dec. 19): In deciding the case described in this article, the New York Court of Appeals ruled on Dec. 19 that the state does not need to release the Board of Parole training documents.

Anthony Dixon was sure the parole commissioners would give him a “fair shake.” As a young man, Dixon was convicted of robbery, gun possession, and murder. After serving his minimum sentence of 30 years, he had extensive evidence of his transformation to present to the New York State Board of Parole. 

“I came into prison at 20, 21 years old and I went before [the board] as a man in my 50s, as a changed person,” Dixon told Bolts and New York Focus. While incarcerated, he developed anti-violence and anti-drug programs and worked toward a college degree. Prison staff wrote letters commending his character and accomplishments. 

The parole board rejected his application anyway—and Dixon said it barely explained why. The decision’s vague phrases and boilerplate language gave no indication of what he could have done differently, he said, and he had no clue how to prepare for his next hearing. It took him two more years of fighting to secure his release.

Since his release, Dixon has helped organize efforts to make New York’s parole system easier for incarcerated people to navigate and more transparent, assailing the board’s bare-bones justifications for its rulings. Now, he and other advocates want to crack down on the board’s opacity.

“This system is killing hope, and in some instances, it does cause some people to take their lives,” said Dixon. “This is not just death by incarceration. It is specifically death by the parole board.”

Over 10,000 people appear before New York’s parole board each year. Hearings are often rushed, lasting an average of 15 minutes. Commissioners are afforded wide discretion in how they decide cases, with little oversight or review. They decide to keep around 60 percent of parole seekers in prison.

New York Focus and Bolts reviewed dozens of parole board decisions and appeals. The decisions run as short as a single paragraph, providing parole seekers little guidance on how to win their release. Many repeat variations of the same vague phrases when denying release, many lifted directly from the state’s parole statute. Applicants are often informed that their release “is not compatible with the welfare of society” for example, without explaining how the board arrived at that conclusion.

“They’re not giving people any clarity about what they can do to obtain parole the next time,” says Michelle Lewin, executive director of the Parole Preparation Project. “They’re not giving individualized reasons for denials, despite the fact that their own internal regulations demand that they do so.” 

The parole board’s lack of transparency creates difficulties for applicants of all stripes. But it especially burdens parole seekers serving lengthy sentences for violent crimes. Despite decades of incarceration, these individuals face the very real possibility of dying in prison, even if they have demonstrated sincere growth and rehabilitation.  

“I think it’s time that we gave people a chance to be productive citizens,” said Assemblymember David Weprin, a Democrat who has introduced legislation to increase the parole board’s transparency, “especially in the case when they’ve shown that … they’re not the same individuals that they were when they committed the crime 20 years ago, 30 years ago.”

Advocates for reform have sought to strengthen board oversight from every angle: legislation like Weprin’s, direct pressure on Governor Kathy Hochul, and cases before the Court of Appeals. 

Last month, Appellate Advocates, a non-profit organization of public defenders, argued before the state’s highest court that the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision should release the training documents it provides to board members. The documents include hypothetical decisions and sample language—all materials that parole advocates say could help incarcerated individuals understand how the board makes decisions and how to make the strongest case for release.

DOCCS has resisted, and argued in court that it should be allowed to shield the documents, in a dispute that has dragged on for over five years.

Jose Saldaña, the director of the Release Aging People in Prison campaign, described a similar experience with the board. He spent decades incarcerated in New York, in his case for the attempted murder of an NYPD sergeant when he was 27 years old. Though  he had earned his associate degree and led several restorative justice and victim awareness programs, the parole board denied his release four times.

“We discussed these vague reasons … ‘releasing you at the time would so deprecate the nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law’,” Saldaña said. “What does that really mean?”

“Nobody knows what that means,” Steven Zeidman, director of the CUNY School of Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic, told Bolts and New York Focus. Not even parole commissioners. Zeidman said commissioners apply the same language differently from one another, even when evaluating the same individual. “What’s the message to people inside preparing? How do you prepare?”

New York law requires board members to consider many enumerated factors in their decisions, but the commissioners frequently emphasize the nature of the parole seeker’s offense over their rehabilitation and growth while incarcerated. Their cases are often dismissed with terse lines like “your positive programming to date is noted.” 

Reform-minded lawmakers have long supported Weprin’s bill, the Fair and Timely Parole Act, which would reduce the board’s opacity and limit some of the commissioners’ discretion. The legislation would eliminate the vague statutory language cited in board decisions and require commissioners to explain in “detailed, individualized, and non-conclusory terms” exactly why they decided to deny release. It would also require the board to issue a quarterly report that includes the reasons for each denial, which commissioners were assigned to each case, and how they voted.

The bill would establish a presumption that the board would grant parole once an applicant has served their minimum sentence. To deny release, parole commissioners would have to clearly articulate how a parole seeker threatens public safety.

Weprin, a Democrat, first introduced the bill in 2017. Since then, three separate iterations have died in committee, where the 2023 version now sits. Dixon attributes the icy reception in Albany to upstate conservative legislators — whose constituents disproportionately benefit from employment opportunities in the prison system. “Upstate districts have a vested interest to keep this no-sense institution going,” he said. 

Senator Patrick Gallivan, the chamber’s Republican minority whip, is a former parole commissioner who opposes the Fair and Timely Parole Act. His district encompasses Erie County’s Collins Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison employing hundreds of people. But he said his opposition to the bill has nothing to do with protecting upstate jobs.

Gallivan said the bill would limit the board’s ability to consider negative aspects of the parole seekers’ applications, such as their institutional records. He agrees with reformers that the Board of Parole has too much discretion — but he sees them stretching the rules to grant release, rather than keeping people in prison. Gallivan said that when he was a parole commissioner, he tried to set his biases as a former sheriff and state trooper aside and vote according to the law. He said he wants everyone on the board to do the same. Some commissioners say at their confirmation hearings that they will abide by the law, he said, but “the minute that they got sworn in, they said, ‘I don’t care what the law is. I’m here to release people and I’m going to.’” 

Reform advocates have repeatedly called on Hochul to reform the parole system.  As New York Focus and Bolts have previously reported, the board features zombie commissioners serving long past their terms have expired and a medical parole system that leaves most terminally ill people to die behind bars. The vacancies on the board have long afforded Hochul the opportunity to staff it with reformers. But Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, said she does not expect Hochul to expend any of her political capital on the issue. Under Republican pressure, she noted, Hochul has supported other rollbacks to criminal justice reforms in recent years.

Hochul has pointed to fluctuations in crime and rearrest rates when backing down from other reforms. But Bertram claims that lenient parole policies don’t undermine public safety. She points to a federal study showing that people who commit violent offenses are the least likely to be rearrested after release. “The safest person you can release from prison is a murderer, especially someone that served 10 to 20 years,” said Bertram. “That’s just what the data shows.”  

Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for comment. 

Frustrated by New York’s legislative and executive branches, parole reformers have turned to the judiciary. The state’s courts have limited power to modify parole board decisions, but advocates hope they will at least compel the board to be more transparent. 

At a November 15 Court of Appeals hearing, Appellate Advocates argued that the state’s Freedom of Information Law mandates the release of the board’s training documents.

DOCCS revealed the existence of the training materials in 2020 when they told Appellate Advocates they were withholding certain documents in response to a records request. Michael Higgins, assistant director of the University at Buffalo Law School Civil Rights and Transparency Clinic, says that administrative agencies routinely prepare interpretations of the law that govern what they do, but they often keep the interpretations secret. “Basically, they make up rules that are written down in their training documents or in manuals that the public can’t access,” he said. He says FOIL requires the release of those documents upon request.

At the hearing, DOCCS argued that FOIL does not extend to the training materials because a parole board lawyer prepared them, shielding them from disclosure under attorney-client privilege. (DOCCS declined to comment due to ongoing litigation.) Appellate Advocates countered that attorney-client privilege covers legal advice on real-world scenarios, not abstract training documents.

While the Court of Appeals has shown signs of a leftward shift on some criminal legal issues, it’s unclear whether the newly reconfigured court will flex its power on behalf of parole seekers. During oral argument, Associate Judge Shirley Troutman, a Hochul appointee, expressed concerns that ruling for Appellate Advocates would foist an “unreasonable burden upon trial courts” handling future disputes over attorney-client privilege. Even Chief Judge Rowan Wilson, the court’s liberal leader, said Appellate Advocates’ arguments had “frightening” implications for attorneys. The court scarcely touched on how its decision would impact incarcerated individuals.

For advocates like Dixon, obtaining the release of these documents would only be a first step. Achieving a truly transparent parole system would require wholesale changes, from data disclosure to board appointment procedures. 

“The matrix itself needs to be dismantled,” Dixon said. “The system has to change because it is criminal what is happening.”

The post “Nobody Knows What That Means”: The Murky Decisions of New York’s Parole Board appeared first on Bolts.

On June 25, 2019, in a nightclub in Woodside, Queens, public defender Tiffany Cabán claimed election night victory as the borough’s newest District Attorney. Backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cabán—a queer Latina woman from Richmond Hill, Queens, who ran on ending mass incarceration and the war on drugs—beamed as the crowd shouted “DSA!” In theory, it was a left-wing victory: Cabán had run among a slate of seven candidates, including Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, and won. But just days later, outstanding provisional and absentee ballots changed the picture. After the final tally, Katz, a moderate and the Democratic party’s favored choice, led by a mere 60 votes. Cabán conceded.

Almost exactly four years later, on June 27, Katz will try to keep her office. This time, her leading opponent in the Democratic primary is a candidate who is nothing like Cabán. Katz faces George Grasso, a former NYPD cop and an administrative judge for criminal matters for Queens Supreme Court who decided to leave the bench more than two years early because he “could no longer keep [his] mouth shut” about the state of the city’s public safety, he told Mother Jones and Bolts. 

The shift in debate in this primary race is the latest example of a broader transformation in the politics of crime and public safety in New York. Instead of a challenge from a leftist like Cabán, the insurgent candidate is Grasso: a man who gleefully calls himself the “anti-Krasner,” a reference to Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney. Grasso is openly advocating for a return to law-and-order approach to policing.

His entrance into a Democratic primary is indicative of a move to the right foreshadowed by New York’s Democratic leaders. Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have touted tough-on-crime policies, doubling down on critiques of bail reform, and moving away from decarceral solutions. The contours of the Queen’s race is part of a larger national narrative, according to experts: In Democratic cities, like San Francisco and Boston, tough-on-crime rhetoric has become a norm again. Data-driven critiques, and reevaluations of criminal justice policy, have less sway—some Democrats, instead, want to return to the politics of law-and-order.

Grasso started out as a “foot cop” in southeast Queens in 1979. He rose to first deputy police commissioner of the NYPD, a position he held for almost a decade, before, most recently, taking the bench as an administrative judge in the Queens Supreme Court. Often, Grasso mentions his tenure with former New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton, who has endorsed him, as core to his beliefs about policing. He says his priority is to return the DA’s office to the quality-of-life enforcement Bratton embraced—criminalizing lesser offenses such as defacing property and fare evasion that “create conditions conducive to” increased crime and violence. (Grasso was part of the Giuliani-era team that designed the first quality of life strategy for Commissioner Bratton.)

In conversation with Mother Jones and Bolts, Grasso mentions specifically taking on fare evasion. The Friday following the death of Jordan Neely—an unhoused Black New Yorker who was choked to death by another passenger on a subway train car—Grasso took to Twitter, not to express outrage at Neely’s public killing, but to criticize the NYPD for ending warrant checks for violating transit laws, a policy that ended due to overwhelmingly targeting houseless New Yorkers. “WHAT!!!! This is the misguided policy that led directly to Mr. Neely’s death and Mr. Penny’s arrest!” he wrote.

Grasso told Mother Jones and Bolts that if the law had been enforced properly, Neely would have likely have ended up back on Rikers Island. “Maybe they would’ve hooked him up with some kind of mental healthcare or something,” he said. “We know one thing for sure, he would be alive today.” (This year, three people have died at Rikers. Last year was the deadliest in a quarter century, Gothamist reported, with 19 deaths at the jail; six are reported to have been suicides.)

While Grasso extols broken windows policing, he says he wants to prioritize mental health as DA, creating the office’s first mental health bureau and turning Rikers Island into a Bellevue Hospital satellite to treat the majority of the incarcerated population at Rikers who struggle with mental illness. During his judicial tenure Grasso championed alternatives to incarceration, creating diversion programs for teens in partnership with the Center for Court Innovation.

“I really hate the fact that people say, ‘Oh, Grasso’s coming in from the right.’ I’m telling you, I do not consider myself right-wing in any way, shape, or form,” he said. “MAGA makes me wanna throw up.”

Despite that, Grasso has created an independent “Public Safety” party line on the General Election ballot in November to ensure all Queens voters, including Republicans, can vote for him. He’s spoken at both Central Queens and Queens Village Republican clubs in the past few months. He says it was because requests to speak at Queens Democratic clubs were denied.

Grasso’s rhetoric is a “caricature of a Republican throwback,” according to Anthony C. Thompson, a professor of clinical law emeritus of law at New York University and founder of the faculty’s Center on Race, Inequality and the Law. “If we look at history, Katz tacked to the left rhetorically to respond to her opponent [in 2019], so it is a legitimate question to say, ‘Will she tack to the right to respond to Grasso?”

The incumbent Katz is once again backed by the New York Democratic Party stalwarts. She has received $12,500 in donations from Jay Jacobs since 2022, the head of the New York State Democratic Party, and has been endorsed by state officials including U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez. She has led a fairly moderate reelection campaign focused on straddling the line—attempting to triangulate between reform and harsher crackdowns on crime. Katz has defended her record of getting guns off the street and curtailing retail theft, while also making structural changes to the criminal legal system called for by some progressives.

In May, Katz shared her campaign ad, and tweeted that it is “appropriately titled, ‘Promise’”—a reference to pledges she made to voters when she took office in 2020. Katz has fulfilled some of them. She notably created a wrongful conviction unit and a hate crimes bureau within the DA’s office. 

But Katz has been shaky on other reforms. In her 2019 campaign, Katz vowed not to prosecute low-level marijuana charges. In 2021, she did dismiss thousands of marijuana-related offenses, but this April her office began cracking down on unlicensed cannabis vendors. On sex-work cases, Katz said she would work to implement the controversial Nordic model which prosecutes clients and sex traffickers, not sex workers, but according to Documented, Queens still maintains the highest rates of prosecution for prostitution arrests in the city.

Katz has maintained a conventional approach to office that follows that of a politician responding to pressure rather than a prosecutor committed to fixing problems, according to Thompson. He points out her decision to start a conviction integrity unit, for example. “She didn’t say, ‘When we reversed 99 cases because of conviction integrity problems, we then looked at the prosecutors who tried those cases and had them engage in training or fire them,’” Thompson says. “It’s been very much a political response. It sounds like what a state assembly person would respond, not what a thoughtful district attorney who’s trying to change her office would respond.”

Most notably, Katz has waffled in her views on bail reform. At the start of her last campaign, in December 2018, she said she would no longer seek cash bail for misdemeanors and advocate for broader state legislation that would do the same. Six months later in a June candidate debate, Katz said, “under my administration, there will be no cash bail.” Then, one week after taking office in 2020, an assistant district attorney in Katz’s office set bail for a man charged with stealing a cellphone at $50,000, breaking her initial reform pledge. (When NY1’s Erroll Louis questioned Katz about reneging, she said she believed cash bail was unfair “deep in [her] heart” but that Queens was not ready to eliminate it.)

Bail reform has stood in for broader discussions about crime in New York in the past three years since it went into effect. Adams and Hochul have both pointed to the 2019 bail reform law—which sought to end cash bail for a wide array of misdemeanors and non-violent felonies to prevent jail time for low-income defendants—as a reason for spiking crime.

This spring, New York’s state legislature, with Hochul’s blessing, passed a budget that rolled back some of the most significant reforms of the 2019 bail law. The changes eliminated the provision that judges needed to use the “least restrictive” means to ensure defendants return to court. Now, judges are allowed to set any conditions they deem necessary—including setting cash bail, which, advocates have warned, will lead to more pretrial incarceration. 

Both Grasso and Katz have supported this rollback, and in fact have each argued for a further revision to bail reform, to include a “dangerousness standard” that would allow judges to consider defendants’ past conviction or other more nebulous factors in order to detain them pretrial. Hochul has argued against implementing dangerousness calling it “subjective” and “determined by the color of [defendants’] skin and perception of dangerousness,” but critics have said her new revision is equally as arbitrary and biased. (It ultimately was not included in the budget that passed.) 

On May 5, Katz joined Adams and Hochul at an event to sign the controversial bail reform changes into law. Katz called it a “welcome amendment” in a statement. But Grasso believes it doesn’t go far enough. He has said the fact of Katz’s attendance at the event proves she isn’t “serious” about setting a true dangerousness standard for defendants. 

Queens had the second largest number of arrests for misdemeanors, according to recent data from New York City’s Criminal Justice Agency, among the five boroughs. More than 17,000 people were arrested in Queens on low-level offenses, many of whom, if unable to post bail, could end up in Rikers for months at a time.

While the 2019 race moved the frame of what the new DA could do in office and how she could use her discretion wisely for safety and justice, Katz is hardly seen as a reformer, says Insha Rahman, the vice president for advocacy and partnerships for the Vera Institute of Justice. “Some of her policies are indeed reform oriented,” Rahman says. “[But] Katz has in general been less reform minded in her first term in office, than say, certainly Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, or Alvin Bragg in Manhattan.”

In other U.S. cities, Rahman says, there’s more appetite among voters for solutions to crime that don’t resort to failed models of justice. Just last month, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, home to Pittsburgh, voters elected public defender Matt Dugan over the incumbent Steve Zappala in the Democratic primary. But in DA races across New York state there are far fewer self-professed reformers on the ballot than four years ago. In the Bronx, defense attorney Tess Cohen is challenging incumbent Darcel Clark on a progressive platform, but in Queens, progressives have largely haven’t weighed in on the contest between Katz and Grasso. (Cabán did not respond to a request for an interview.)

One exception has been progressive city councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who publicly supported Tiffany Cabán in 2019. He wrote that he has not “always seen eye to eye” with Katz, but still commended her for her efforts in a June QNS editorial where he endorsed her run against “dubious opponents.” 

As with most off-year elections, turnout will determine the outcome. In the 2019 primaries, only 11.9 percent of Queens voters showed up to the polls. It is the immigrant borough, with 46 percent of residents who were born outside of the country. 

One difficulty in projecting the results could be the presence on the ballot of Devian Daniels, a former public defender, who entered the race in mid-April. While Daniels is running to reform the office with a focus on decriminalizing poverty and ending mass incarceration, she does not have an active campaign, with any contributions or endorsements on record—with the exception of submitting signatures for ballot placement. Her candidacy was not approved by the New York City Bar Association. Daniels has also been tied to Hiram Monserrate, the former New York legislator convicted of federal corruption charges for stealing city council funds and for assaulting his girlfriend. (Daniels did not respond in time for requests for comment.)

Still, Katz is expected to prevail. Neither Rahman nor Thompson believe Grasso will win the primary. Yet both worry about how progressives might hold Katz’ office accountable.

“I think the danger is that Katz will misinterpret a victory as a signal that she doesn’t need to do anything differently, ” Thompson tells Mother Jones and Bolts. “The great challenge around people who really wanna see true racial equity in the criminal legal system and true reform is: How do we continue to keep elected officials’ feet to the fire?”

The post Melinda Katz Once Faced Off Against DSA. Now It’s New York’s Police Lobby. appeared first on Bolts.

Ryan says he was there to monitor the police behavior toward protesters, standing removed from the gathering. “I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go watch,’ because police have a tendency to overreach to these little things,” he recounts. “I don’t think I should have been arrested. But I was.” The police initially accused him of resisting arrest but they later admitted that this characterization was incorrect and apologized; still, they maintained trespassing charges.

A few weeks later, Ryan announced his candidacy for Broome County district attorney. He says he’d bring into the office a more skeptical perspective toward the criminal legal system, born of his experience as a defense attorney and public defender. “We all know that they police certain communities and treat certain communities differently,” he told Bolts. “If you’re not in a position of power to change it, then it’s not going to change.” 

He added, “The only one who is a gatekeeper to make sure that horrible jobs aren’t done is the district attorney because he or she has the ultimate discretion on whether to prosecute and how to prosecute, and what justice to extract from each individual situation.”

Broome County’s DA race is among dozens this year that will decide who leads local prosecution and law enforcement in New York. Fifteen counties are electing their sheriffs and 24 their DA, and the filing deadline for candidates to run for a party’s nomination passed last month. 

Most counties drew just one candidate who’ll be facing no competition. They include conservative sheriffs who have resisted gun control, the high-profile DAs of Rochester and Staten Island, and a sheriff who defied calls to resign for sharing a racist social media post—and is now poised to stay in office for four more years. 

Still, a few flashpoints have emerged. Candidates are taking contrasting approaches on bail in Broome, discovery reform in the Bronx, and policing in Queens. Rensselaer County (Troy) faces another reckoning with its unusual decision to partner with federal immigration authorities.

Bolts has compiled a full list of candidates running in the June 27 primaries, which will decide the nominees of the four political parties that have ballot lines in New York State: the Democratic, Republican, Working Families, and Conservative parties. Candidates can still petition until late May to appear on the Nov. 7 ballot as an independent.

These elections are unfolding against the backdrop of reforms the state adopted in 2019 to detain fewer people pretrial and offer defendants more access to the evidence against them. Democrats earlier this month agreed to roll back those reforms after years of pressure by many DAs and sheriffs. Their new package, championed by Governor Kathy Hochul, gives judges’ more authority to impose bail, amid other provisions that will likely increase pretrial detention. Hochul also backed a push by New York City DAs to loosen discovery rules requiring that prosecutors quickly share evidence with the defense, but the final legislation did not touch those.

Tess Cohen, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who is running for DA in the Bronx, is one of a few candidates this year who is voicing support for the original pretrial reforms and distaste for the rollbacks. Cohen is running in the Democratic primary against Bronx DA Darcel Clark, who was reported by City & State to be the chief instigator in lobbying state politicians to  loosen discovery rules. (Clark and other city DAs flipped on their push in the final days.) Cohen faults state politicians for making policy based on the media blowing up specific instances of crime.

“The problem with people like the governor bowing down to press coverage that is sensationalist and fear-mongering, and almost always inaccurate, is that we actually make our communities less safe when we do that,” Cohen told Bolts. “We have very good data that shows that holding people at Rikers Island on bail or low level crimes does not make us safer.” 

A study released in March by the John Jay College found that people who were released due to the bail reform were less likely to be rearrested. 

Eli Northrup, a staunch proponent of the original reforms as policy director at the Bronx Defenders, hopes that the upcoming elections usher in more local officials who are “looking to change the system, shrink the system, work toward having fewer people incarcerated, rather than using it as a tool for coercing pleas.”  But he is also circumspect after the new rollbacks. Even if a reformer were to win an office, he says, they’d likely have to contend with police unions, mayors, and other entrenched powers looking to block reforms. “What we should be doing is spending less money on policing and prosecution and investing that very money into the communities that are harmed the most by violence,” he says.

To kick off Bolts’ coverage of New York’s criminal justice elections this year, here are five storylines that jump out since the filing deadline has passed.

1. Challenges from opposite directions for two New York City DAs 

Queens four years ago saw a tense Democratic primary for DA between Tiffany Cabán, a public defender who ran as a decarceral candidate, and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, who prevailed by just 60 votes. Four years later, Katz faces a primary challenge from her right from George Grasso, a retired judge and former NYPD official, who is calling for harsher policing and thinks the city is waging a “war on cops.” Grasso is running with the support of Bill Bratton, the former NYPD commissioner and a frequent critic of policing reforms. 

Public defender Devian Daniels is running as well, saying she wants to fight mass incarceration from the Queens DA’s office after “years of witnessing abuses on the front lines as defense counsel.” The Democratic primary typically amounts to victory in this blue stronghold. 

In the Bronx, Darcel Clark’s sole primary challenger, Tess Cohen, says wants to take the DA’s office in a more progressive direction. She says that Clark’s lobbying to loosen the state’s discovery rules is emblematic of how prosecutors can coerce defendants into guilty pleas. “If you’re held in Rikers, and you can only get out if you plead guilty, and you can’t make that argument that you’re actually innocent because you don’t have the evidence, then you end up pleading guilty just to get out of Rikers,” she told Bolts. 

Cohen explained that she would also change how the office decides whether to recommend for pretrial detainment. “If we are in a space where our recommendation for sentence or our plea offer means the person is immediately going to be released from jail, they should be released anyways,” she said. “You should not be holding someone in jail that you plan to release the minute they plead guilty.” 

Clark did not reply to a request for comment.

2. North of New York City, the policy contrasts on pretrial reform are muted

Broome County, on the border with Pennsylvania, had the highest rate of people detained in jail as of 2020, the year the reforms were first implemented, according to data compiled by the Vera Institute for Justice. Ryan, the Democratic lawyer running for DA, told Bolts he supports the reforms, crediting them for helping slightly reduce the local jail population. 

But his two Republican opponents in this swing county disagree. Incumbent Michael Korchak has pushed for their repeal for years, while his primary rival Paul Battisti, a defense attorney, says the reforms were “extreme.” Neither Battisti nor Korchak replied to requests for comment. Their rhetoric is in line with the position of many, but not all, upstate DAs who have lobbied to roll back the pretrial reforms ever since they passed in 2019. 

But candidates have tended to converge on pretrial policy in the other DA races north of New York City. There are three such counties besides Broome with more than 100,000 residents. 

In Ulster County, Democrat Manny Nneji, who is currently the chief assistant prosecutor, faces Michael Kavanagh, who used to have the same job and now works as a defense attorney, and is running as a Republican. In interviews with Hudson Valley One earlier this year, both candidates largely agreed that the 2019 bail reform should be made more restrictive, and jostled about who is tougher on crime.

In Onondaga County, home to Syracuse, Incumbent William Fitzpatrick is running for re-election as a Republican against Chuck Keller, who filed to run for the Democratic nomination but also that of the Conservative Party, an established party in the state. (New York law allows candidates to run for multiple nominations at once.) The Syracuse Post-Standard reports that the local Conservative Party in March chose to endorse Keller over Kitzpatrick after Keller shared with them that he supports bail reform roll backs in line with what lawmakers ended up passing in early May. (Christine Varga is also running in the Conservative Party primary.)

In Dutchess County, Republican William Grady is retiring this year after 40 years as DA, a tenure during which he strongly fought statewide reform proposals. Democrat Anthony Parisi and Republican Matthew Weishaupt, who have both worked as prosecutors under Grady, are running to replace him; after he entered the race, Parisi faced a threat of retribution from Grady, for which the DA later apologized. Weishaupt has said he thinks the discovery reforms are “dangerous” in how they help defendants. Parisi did not reply to questions on his views on the reforms.

Six smaller counties—Columbia, Delaware, Hamilton, Lewis, Seneca, and Sullivan, with populations ranging from 5,000 to 80,000 residents—also host contested DA races this year. 

3. Half of this year’s DA elections are uncontested

A single candidate is running unopposed in 12 of New York’s DA races. Ten of them are already in office, but two are newcomers: Todd Carville ​​in Oneida County and Anthony DiMartino in Oswego County. Both are Republicans and currently work as assistant prosecutors.

Michael McMahon, Staten Island’s DA, is running unopposed for the second consecutive cycle: He is a Democrat in a red-leaning county, but the GOP did not put up a candidate against him. He has been very critical of the criminal justice reforms adopted by his party’s lawmakers, and has pushed for their rollback. Another prominent critic of the pretrial reforms, Monroe County (Rochester) DA Sandra Doorley, is also running unopposed. Doorley, a Republican who was the president of the state’s DA association back when the reforms were first implemented in 2020, faced a heated challenge four years ago but is now on a golden path toward a fourth term.

4. Will ICE’s 287(g) program retain a foothold in New York?

Rensselaer County, home to Troy, is the only county in New York State that participates in ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to act like federal immigration agents in county jails—and one of the only blue-leaning counties in the nation with such an agreement. Immigrants’ rights activists from Cape Cod to suburban Atlanta have targeted 287(g) by getting involved in sheriff’s elections in recent years, tipping these offices toward candidates who pledged to terminate their offices’ partnerships with ICE.

Patrick Russo, the Republican sheriff who joined 287(g), is retiring this year. The race to replace him will decide whether ICE’s program retains its sole foothold in New York.

But will anyone even make the case for breaking ties with ICE? The two Republicans who are running for Russo’s office, Kyle Bourgault and Jason Stocklas, each told Bolts that they would maintain their county in the program with no hesitation. 

The only Democratic candidate, Brian Owens, did not return repeated requests for comment. He said at a press conference last month that he had no position on the matter. “I’d want to educate myself a little more before I’d make any decision on that,” he said. Owens is a former police chief of Troy, a city that during his tenure saw local activism pressuring officials to not collaborate with ICE, so these are not new questions. Still, Russo coasted to re-election unopposed four years ago, and it remains to be seen whether the 2023 cycle gives immigrants’ rights activists any more of an opening. 

5. Most incumbent sheriffs are virtually certain of securing new terms

Albany Sheriff Craig Apple drew national attention in 2021 for filing a criminal complaint against then-Governor Andrew Cuomo for groping, but he also attracted criticism for fumbling the case. The New York Times reported at the time that Apple seemed to be made of Teflon, having rebounded from past controversies with multiple re-election bids where he faced no opponent. History repeated itself again—he drew no challenger this year. 

But judging by the lay of the land throughout the state, this says less about Apple than it does about a broader dearth of engagement in New York’s local elections: Overall, 80 percent of the state’s sheriff races are uncontested this year. 

This includes the sheriffs of Fulton and Greene County, who have fiercely opposed a new gun law banning concealed weapons in a long list of public spaces, alongside many peers who are not up for election this year. Fulton’s Richard Giardino took to Fox News to signal he’d only loosely enforce it. 

And it includes Rockland County Sheriff Louie Falco, who faced calls for his resignation in 2020 after he shared a link from a white supremacist website about Black people on Facebook. Three years later, he won’t even face any opponent as he coasts to a fourth term.

The post Tensions High on Bail and Policing as New Yorkers Elect DAs and Sheriffs appeared first on Bolts.

Associate Judge Rowan Wilson, a progressive jurist who is already a member of the court, will replace DiFiore as Chief Judge. Caitlin Halligan, a well-known private lawyer who served as New York’s solicitor general in the 2000s, will take Willson’s seat as associate judge.

Liberals hope that these changes push the court to the left. Over the past several years, they’ve watched with frustration as a bloc of four judges, enough for a majority on this seven-person court, consistently sided with corporations, police, and prosecutors, leaving progressives like Wilson to write dissents in cases that tested matters’ like workers’ ability to seek damages or law enforcement’s power to conduct warrantless searches. 

Now Wilson, the state’s first Black chief judge, will enjoy new prerogatives to shape the state’s vast judicial branch to his liking—a chief judge has influence over the rules for other courts and authority to appoint people to key positions like the Commission on Judicial Nominations—and progressives have vocally celebrated his promotion ever since Hochul announced it last month. 

“Rowan Wilson, at least in his opinions, has signaled that he’s really attuned to the needs of the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” said Noah Rosenblum, a law professor at NYU Law. “There are reasons to anticipate that he will use his powers as chief judge to try to make the administrative machinery of New York courts more responsive to those values.”

But when it comes to the raw math on upcoming rulings, it’s Halligan who matters. Hers will be the new vote with the power to flip outcomes when she votes differently than DiFiore would have. And even if she does end the conservative bloc’s predictable control of the court, how consistently she sides with its liberal members is a separate question; besides Halligan, the court presently has three more right-leaning members, two judges who typically lean left (including Wilson), and one who is often a swing vote. 

How exactly Halligan reshapes this intricate balance remains to be seen, in part due to a legal question that surrounds her nomination, and also due to her career being something of an ideological Rorschach test for court observers.

When I told Rosenblum I was setting out to ascertain how her nomination may affect the court’s future cases, he quipped, “I don’t envy you.”

Just three months ago, the landscape in the state Senate looked dramatically different. Progressive groups in December rallied against Hector LaSalle, Hochul’s first choice to replace DiFiore. Within days of Hochul’s announcement, reproductive rights organizations, unions, and criminal justice reform advocates denounced LaSalle’s past rulings on abortion, defendants’ rights, and labor. Half-a-dozen Democratic senators said they opposed him within a day; and in January, most of the Democratic caucus voted against him when the state Senate rejected him.

No such tumult greeted Halligan. Her confirmation process was comparatively very quiet, and her confirmation this week was backed by nearly all Democratic senators. (Many Republicans opposed it.) 

It’s not that progressives rallied behind her enthusiastically. When I asked LaSalle’s critics about Halligan, they often began by offering lengthy praise for Wilson, whom Hochul announced on the same day as something like a two-judge deal. In a statement this week, Senator Jessica Ramos, who had quickly opposed LaSalle from the left in December, said she was “choosing to be hopeful” that Halligan would align with Wilson’s wing of the court. So what drove the left’s widespread attitude of guarded support?

Whereas DiFiore was a former Republican politician (though she was selected for the bench by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo), Halligan has long been associated with Democratic or liberal legal circles. A former clerk of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Halligan was nominated by then-President Barack Obama in 2011 to one of the nation’s most prestigious federal courts, the D.C. Circuit. But she faced a yearslong blockade by U.S. Senate Republicans, who filibustered her on nearly-perfect party line votes. 

In the absence of many other signposts, this background has served as a sort of proxy this month for Halligan’s judicial politics. It has fueled an expectation, which I heard from a number of state sources this month, that she’ll pave the way for the court to issue more liberal rulings.

“The Obama administration thought she was liberal enough,” said Vincent Bonventre, a professor at Albany Law School who studies the New York Court of Appeals, adding that Obama’s nominees to the nation’s highest courts did tend to lean left. “So you would think that the vetting has already been done.” 

Still, some of the same groups that successfully fought LaSalle expressed caution toward Halligan. As a longtime private lawyer, Halligan has taken on many cases on behalf of corporate clients, and progressive organizations raised concerns about a number of them in recent weeks. 

While working at a law firm last decade, Halligan represented Chevron when the oil company targeted human rights lawyer Steven Donziger with a racketeering lawsuit, after Donziger helped secure billions in damages due to Chevron’s polluting activities in the Amazon rainforest. 

In 2014, Halligan represented UPS in a high-profile case, heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, in which she argued that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not require corporations to make accommodations for pregnancy. (The court mostly ruled in favor of Penny Young, the plaintiff.) Halligan’s work on behalf of UPS drew criticism well before her nomination to New York’s high court. The legal publication The Flaw focused on Halligan’s work in Young vs. UPS in January as part of a broad jeremiad against Big Law, to make the case that attorneys who work on behalf of corporate clients should be accountable for “fueling inequality.”

After DiFiore’s resignation, prominent senators and progressive groups had urged Hochul to choose a public interest attorney or public defender to add professional diversity to the court, which mostly includes former corporate lawyers and prosecutors. (Halligan also worked as general counsel for the Manhattan DA’s office.)

One of these organizations, the Center for Community Alternatives, urged New York lawmakers to question Halligan about the “troubling” cases on which she has worked as a private attorney, while also acknowledging that her “contradictory record” contains cases where she defended more liberal positions. The New York Immigration Coalition on Wednesday called Halligan’s nomination “concerning” due to her “controversial record as a corporate attorney.”

The only Democrat who voted against Halligan on Wednesday was Jabari Brisport, a member of Democratic Socialists of America. Brisport did not reply to a request for comment.

Halligan has replied to these criticisms by distancing herself from the content of the claims she has made on behalf of her clients. These should not be taken as an indication of her own values, she has said, or of the outcomes she would prefer to see.

“In whatever capacity I represented a client, I’ve done my best to bring to the court whatever arguments there are on that client’s behalf,” Halligan said at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

She did not respond to a request for an interview for this story.

Halligan made the same point a decade ago, when she faced recriminations from the other direction by U.S. Senate Republicans for defending liberal policies while solicitor general in New York. The GOP zeroed in on legal work she had conducted on behalf of New York’s effort to hold gun manufacturers accountable for gun violence, calling her an “activist.”

Halligan’s allies responded at the time by describing her as a moderate. They played up other work she did in that role that was more likely to appeal to GOP senators, such as a memo she issued in March 2004 advising local officials to not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, effectively shutting down a mayor in Ulster County who days earlier had done just that, at a time where a few local officials were sticking their neck out for same-sex marriage. They also insisted that, in cases like her work against gun manufacturers, she was merely doing her job: representing the interests of her client, which in that case was New York State. 

Since much of Halligan’s legal career has involved such work, though, putting all that to the side would leave few tea leaves in which to decipher her judicial philosophy. 

It also raises the question of what would even count as a tea leaf at all. At a time when judges and courts’ ability to set huge swaths of policy is so transparent, what are lawmakers and the public supposed to evaluate as indications of how Halligan will approach her new role?

“We don’t have a ton of information that we can evaluate that reflect her own particular political or jurisprudential belief, and that presents a genuine puzzle,” Rosenblum said, while adding that the information we do have—including her selection by what he called federal Democrats’ “judicial nominating machine”—is consistent with a cautiously liberal jurisprudence.

“It’s very difficult to predict what kind of Judge Halligan will be,” Peter Martin, director of judicial accountability at the Center for Community Alternatives, told me on Wednesday. “She has spent her entire career as an advocate, and she has written close to nothing that wasn’t on behalf of a client, meaning her personal values and understanding of the law are obscured.” 

Sam Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan, was the lawyer who represented Penny Young in her case against UPS nine years ago. Despite their work on opposite sides of that case, he cheered Halligan’s nomination earlier this month.

“I’ve known Caitlin for more than 25 years and, based on many experiences with her over that time, am convinced she’ll be a progressive judge,” he told me. (Bagenstos, who currently works as the general counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, insisted that he was talking in his personal capacity.) “Obviously, nobody can doubt her legal brilliance.”

Asked for what specifically he would point to as a public indication of this disposition, Bagenstos pointed to Halligan’s pro bono work on behalf of New York tenants, defending the constitutionality of rent stabilization against landlord groups. (One of New York’s most left-wing senators pointed to the same case this week to explain why she backed Halligan’s nomination.) 

On its face, this case is similar to the others: Halligan was working on behalf of her clients.

But Halligan said this week that her pro bono cases can offer unique insight into her values. They are all, after all, work she is choosing to do for free. Such cases, Halligan told a legal publication in 2019, “allow the [law] firm to engage in a meaningful way with matters of true public interest.” Other pro bono work from Halligan’s includes writing briefs in defense of the Affordable Care Act or representing employees with labor recriminations against Amazon. 

“Halligan argued in her confirmation hearing that her pro bono work best illustrates the legal outcomes she personally supports,” Martin said. “We’ll find out soon enough if she was telling the truth when she said that.” 

The biggest controversy that has greeted Halligan’s nomination does not concern her record. It’s about whether it was legal of Hochul to appoint her when she did.

In New York, governors choose judges out of it on a short list presented to them by a state nominating commission. Wilson and Halligan both featured on the list prepared by the commission to fill the vacancy created by DiFiore’s resignation; but technically, Hochul selected Halligan to fill a still-hypothetical vacancy, the one that would be left by Wilson once the Senate confirmed him as chief justice. Republicans and some legal scholars argued this is unconstitutional and that Wilson’s confirmation should trigger a new vacancy and a new shortlist before Hochul can fill it. State Democrats replied by passing a law that specified that Hochul was authorized to do this; they did so after Hochul announced her nominations. 

Heading into Halligan’s confirmation hearings this week, Republicans threatened to sue to block Halligan from joining the court. But The Times Union reported on Wednesday that the GOP did not file a lawsuit before Wednesday’s vote, and that it was unknown whether they could and would still do it in the future.

Hochul’s dual move sped up the process by months, and its apparent success brings the Court of Appeals back to full capacity for the first time since July. 

Bonventre, for one, expects the combination of Wilson’s promotion and Halligan’s arrival to make a significant political difference. 

“The court in recent years has been much more conservative than in the past,” he said. “I don’t think it will become a left-wing court, but will this court be more sympathetic to the rights of the accused? I think unquestionably. Workers’ rights? Unquestionably. Consumer rights? Unquestionably. The rights of people who’ve been harmed by others? Unquestionably.”

But the highest-profile case that awaits Halligan does not fit into these categories. It’s Hochul and other New York Democrats’ recent plea in state court to have another shot at drawing the state’s political maps. Last year, the Court of Appeals struck down Democrats’ gerrymanders in a 4-3 ruling, with DiFiore in the majority and Wilson in dissent, and ordered a trial court to draw remedial maps; this greatly helped Republicans in the midterms. If Halligan approached the issue differently than DiFiore and authorized a second bite at the redistricting apple, it may swing several U.S. House seats in 2024—and it could also affect control of Congress.

With that case still on the horizon, Democratic state senators this week celebrated Halligan for joining the court. “I’m sure the court can become the best appellate court in the nation with her on the bench,” Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who chairs the Judiciary committee, said on the floor. 

It’s become a core tenet of present-day progressive legal advocacy that state appellate courts could provide an antidote to the breathtaking conservative takeover of the federal bench. That view took off during the Trump presidency but has intensified since the Dobbs ruling in June.

Halligan signaled this week that she agreed with that notion, in what may have been her strongest hint of how she’d approach her new position.

“State courts are where the issues that are most important to the day-to-day lives of New Yorkers get decided,” Halligan told the Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing. “And it is where the scope of the New York constitution gets hammered out, a task that is especially important at a moment when federal courts appear to be pulling back on some key constitutional protections.”

The post New York’s Highest Court Takes a Step to the Left, Maybe appeared first on Bolts.

She chose to push it to the right on Thursday by nominating Hector LaSalle, an appellate judge and former prosecutor who has amassed a conservative record, particularly on defendant rights and police oversight, to the New York Court of Appeals.

Hochul’s choice builds on the legacy of Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic governor who at one point had appointed all seven court members, locking in a right-leaning majority that is now likely to live on. 

“Judge LaSalle has a sterling reputation as a consensus-builder, and I know he can unite the court in service of justice,” Hochul said in a statement. Hochul added that LaSalle, whose nomination is subject to a Senate confirmation, will also be the state’s first Latino chief judge. 

In the lead-up to Hochul’s decision, a coalition of progressive New York organizations released an assessment calling the prospect of LaSalle’s nomination “unacceptable” and zeroing in on his rulings on cases that dealt with abortion, criminal justice, and labor. Last week, a group of 46 law professors released a joint letter raising concerns about LaSalle due to what they described as his “activist conservative jurisprudence” and his “cavalier attitude towards reproductive rights, hostility to organized labor, and a worrying insensitivity to due process.”

“He’s put his judicial philosophy out there, on paper, and it strikes me he is to the right of the majority of New Yorkers,” Steve Zeidman, a professor at CUNY law school who signed onto that letter, told Bolts on Thursday.

“This is someone who is less concerned with individual civil liberties, and more concerned with siding with the government and corporations,” Zeidman added. 

Jocelyn Simonson, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, told Bolts on Thursday that she also signed the letter because she finds LaSalle’s record on issues including reproductive rights and criminal procedure to be “abysmal.” 

If he is confirmed by the state’s Democratic-run Senate, LaSalle would fill a vacancy left by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, who abruptly resigned this summer. On the court, DiFiore was part of a bloc of four judges—all appointed by Cuomo—who have consistently banded together around rulings that strengthened the hands of law enforcement, management over labor, landlords, and prosecutors in a slew of cases, the publication New York Focus reported in June. 

DiFiore’s departure broke that bloc’s control over the court, but LaSalle’s record suggests he would reconstitute a conservative-leaning majority.

The main case highlighted by the law professors’ letter last week was a ruling, joined by LaSalle in 2017, that partially protected crisis pregnancy centers, which are run by anti-abortion groups, from an investigation into possible fraud by the New York attorney general’s office.

Another LaSalle ruling that has gained scrutiny came in a 2015 case that authorized the corporation Cablevision to sue union officials for defamation despite state laws that are meant to protect labor leaders. Communication Workers of America released a statement on Wednesday, before LaSalle’s nomination, denouncing his “anti-union stance that directly contradicts the rights of New York’s workers to organize.”

LaSalle has also drawn criticism from criminal justice reform advocates for regularly voting against defendants who brought lawsuits challenging their arrest or conviction. 

Simonson, who teaches criminal law, pointed to a 3-2 ruling in a 2014 case known as People v. Corbin, in which LaSalle sided with the majority in holding that a defendant had waived his right to challenge the constitutionality of a warrantless search when he pled guilty. “Judge LaSalle has demonstrated a troubling lack of concern for the rights of people charged with crimes, especially when it comes to the ability of courts to review unconstitutional police conduct,” she said.

LaSalle would be the fourth former prosecutor on the seven-member court. He is, in fact, the third consecutive appointment to the court who is a former prosecutor, after Cuomo-appointee Madeline Singas and Hochul-appointee Shirley Troutman.

The court currently has no member who has worked as a defense attorney.

“When you look at the federal level, it’s such a contrast with what’s happening in New York,” said Zeidman, the law professor who is himself a former public defender, pointing to President Biden’s nomination of civil rights attorneys and public defenders to the federal bench. That push has largely not been mirrored in state courts, even in blue states like New York.

“The need for that professional diversity, it’s evident in how the [New York] Court of Appeals has operated for the last several years,” Zeidman said. “When you look at criminal cases, much has been written about the fact that the court of appeals is hearing fewer and fewer criminal cases, and when they are, the majority seems to have a knee-jerk reaction of siding with the prosecutors no matter how egregious the issues raised by the defense.”

Eliza Orlins, a public defender and activist in New York City, said she is concerned about the broad powers the chief justice exercises over the court system.

“We’ve made marginal progress in New York in terms of criminal justice issues, when prior we were one of the worst states in the country on discovery, on prosecuting children as adults, on so many things,” she told Bolts on Thursday. “That can all be put in jeopardy.”

Hochul’s choice was constrained to a list of seven names selected by the state’s Commission on Judicial Nomination, a body made up in large part of appointees of Cuomo and DiFiore that created controversy for excluding some prominent liberal jurists and candidates of color. 

Still, the list presented a clear ideological choice for Hochul. Three of the jurists on the list, including LaSalle, had a record closer to that of the court’s current conservative bloc. Three others were endorsed by the progressive coalition, The Court NY Deserves, as the likeliest to counterbalance the right-leaning bloc.

LaSalle was one of three judges on that list to receive the highest qualification ratings from both the New York State Bar Association and New York State Trial Lawyers Association; the other two who did were among the jurists who were championed by progressives. LaSalle has also received strong support from Hispanic and Latino lawyers’ bar associations in New York.

After Hochul’s decision, several progressive groups in that coalition, such as the Working Families Party, quickly called on the state Senate to reject LaSalle. 

“The folks we were hoping ultimately would be considered and appointed were people whose backgrounds and histories showed they were committed to uplifting the lives of marginalized folks,” said Tolu Lawal, the co-lead organizer of Unlock The Bar. “Hochul is on notice and the Senate is also on notice that people are paying attention, and we will be watching the votes and making decisions afterward.” 

Several left-leaning New York senators announced they would oppose LaSalle on Thursday. 

“It’s indefensible to ask for Black votes and then work to incarcerate us,” Jabari Brisport, who represents Brooklyn tweeted on Thursday. “No on LaSalle.” 

Samra Brouk, who represents the Rochester area, denounced LaSalle’s judicial record as “anti-woman, anti-worker, and anti-family.” Others who voiced opposition include Michelle Hinchey, Kristen Gonzalez, Robert Jackson, and Julia Salazar. 

Other Democratic senators with a progressive reputation had more vague reactions to LaSalle’s nomination on Thursday. Brad Hoylman, the chair of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, told New York Focus that he is undecided on LaSalle. Zellnor Myrie, who released a statement last month calling on the governor “to prioritize civil rights and defense experience when selecting our next top jurist,” also tweeted that he was undecided on Thursday.  

Nominations to state court typically don’t draw much attention or controversy. “Traditionally, the senate has been a rubber-stamp,” Zeidman said.

In 2021 progressives tried to organize against Cuomo’s choice to send Singas, who at the time was the district attorney of Nassau County, to the high court. But despite some recorded opposition in the senate, Singas was easily confirmed.

She went on to solidify what became the court’s conservative bloc. At least one powerful New York senator, Michael Gianaris, told Bolts and New York Focus in July that he regretted his support for Singas. On Thursday, his office pointed Bolts toward a statement he issued in September that called for “diverse legal experience.” Another New York senator who supported Singas’s nomination, Andrew Gounardes, said in July that he did not regret his vote because “no one could foresee just how important state government would be;” on Thursday, he released a statement on Thursday saying that he was “deeply concerned” by LaSalle’s record and that New York courts should be a “bulwark” against the conservative federal judiciary. 

Critics of LaSalle are intent on at least making the case this year that state institutions deserve a bright spotlight. 

“In light of the current composition of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, our state courts are more important than ever as interpreters of our laws and our rights,” Simonson said. Zeidman concurs. “I’m optimistic that there’s going to be an awful lot of attention to the confirmation process this go-around.”

Alex Burness contributed reporting.

The article was updated on Friday morning to reflect additional statements from New York senators.

The post Kathy Hochul Pushes New York’s Highest Court to the Right appeared first on Bolts.

Many states hold their local elections on odd-numbered years—a schedule that depresses turnout and that some places are fighting to change. That means that, if you’re interested in the shape of your criminal legal system, critical storylines are already taking shape: These local and state offices enjoy the brunt of the discretion to shape incarceration and policing. DAs and sheriffs, in particular, decide which cases to prosecute and with what severity, exercise nearly unfettered control over jail conditions, and choose how they partner with federal immigration enforcement.

There are nearly 500 elections for prosecutors and sheriffs scheduled for 2023, a Bolts analysis finds—and the first filing deadlines are coming up in just weeks. 

These elections are largely concentrated in Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with just a few sprinkled in Florida, New Jersey, and Washington State. (The full list is available here.)

Other local offices that shape criminal punishment and policing are also on the ballot next year, including three governorships, at least two supreme court justices in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and hundreds of state lawmakers, local judges, and mayors.

Local elections are often very late to take shape, so in most cases the field remains undefined. At this time, the likeliest elections to draw the stark contrasts we have seen in recent cycles—with candidates disagreeing on whether to intentionally aim to reduce incarceration, or what goes into advancing public safety—include prosecutor races in New York City and upstate New York, Pittsburgh and the Philly suburbs, and Northern Virginia, as well as mayoral races in Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and across Texas. Sheriff races across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia may draw some scrutiny to immigration and detention conditions.

Bolts will follow these races throughout the year. Today, I am kicking off our coverage by laying out six big questions that will define the cycle: 

1. Can reform-minded prosecutor candidates hold their ground in Virginia, and make inroads elsewhere?

The last time the counties that are electing their prosecutors in 2023 voted for these same officials, in 2019, the results made for a striking split screen. Virginia saw one of the widest set of wins to date for candidates who campaigned on reducing incarceration. After winning  in a string of populous suburban counties,  they formed a statewide coalition called Virginia Progressive Prosecutors for Justice—at the time an unprecedented step—that advocating for lawmakers to abolish the death penalty and mandatory minimums, among other reforms. But their positions drew heavy heat from the right, including judicial pushback and failed recalls as well as criticism from the left over false promises. 

Now, those first-term incumbents are up for election again. They include Arlington’s Parisa Dehghani-Tafti and Fairfax’s Steve Descano, both in Northern Virginia, who drew attention in 2019 for ousting a pair of incumbents in Democratic primaries, as well as Albemarle’s James Hingeley, Loudoun’s Buta Biberaj, and Prince William’s Amy Ashworth. Several of these incumbents are now facing challengers, intra-party strife, or conservative anger, and the results of the 2023 cycle will determine the political strength of the state’s reform prosecutor coalition  going forward.

In New York and Pennsylvania, though, the 2019 DA elections saw advocates of criminal justice reform largely stagnate due to the sky-high number of uncontested elections and some high-profile losses. 

Pennsylvania’s marquee election in 2023 is likely to be the DA race in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), where longtime Democratic DA Stephen Zappala is a vocal critic of criminal justice reforms amid significant racial disparities in his office. In 2019, Zappala beat multiple progressive challengers, though progressive organizers have made major progress in Pittsburgh in the intervening years, including winning a ballot measure meant to curtail solitary confinement and electing decarceral judges in 2021. 

Other DA races in Pennsylvania include counties like Cumberland and Lancaster that took a distinctly punitive approach to the opioid crisis, and populous Philly suburbs like Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery. Philadelphia’s reform DA Larry Krasner is not up after cruising to re-election in 2021; he has remained relatively isolated so far among DAs in the state, a far cry from the dynamic in Virginia, and 2023 will be the next test of whether his allies can change that.

In New York, where most prosecutors have been relentlessly critical of a landmark package of pretrial reforms, at least two former presidents of the state’s DA association are up for re-election this year—in Monroe County (Rochester) and Onondaga County (Syracuse). Another DA who has battled against state Democrats’ bail reform, William Grady of Dutchess County (Poughkeepsie), has said he is retiring after 40 years as DA.

Bronx DA Darcel Clark has drawn a reform challenger who says she is running to “end mass incarceration” four years after securing re-election unopposed. Also on the 2023 calendar: Queens, the site of the extraordinarily tight 2019 race that saw Melinda Katz become DA after defeating socialist organizer Tiffany Cabán.

In Mississippi, I have my eyes on the Fifth District, which covers seven counties in the central part of the state: DA Doug Evans drew national opprobrium and condemnation from the U.S. Supreme court for his decadeslong effort to prosecute Curtis Flowers six times for the same crime—a crusade exposed in the podcast “In the Dark.” Even with that exceptional spotlight, Evans ran unopposed in 2019 and remains in office, with little accountability, today. 

2. Will sheriffs and jailers face accountability?

The 2022 midterms showcased once again that, with some exceptions, sheriffs tend to secure re-election even when they link up in far-right networks, signal their eagerness to disrupt the federal government, or prepare to disrupt local elections. Next year will bring a different cast of characters to the forefront. There’s Sheriff Adam Fortney of Snohomish County, Washington, in the Seattle suburbs, who faced a recall effort in 2020 for quickly disregarding statewide COVID rules even while ramping up other arrests.

There’s Sheriff Sid Gautreaux, in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s most populous parish, who runs a jail with infamously dangerous conditions. Or there’s Sheriff Mike Chapman in Loudoun County, Virginia, who has drawn scrutiny for accepting campaign donations from private contractors that work with his office, a common practice among jailors. The vast majority of sheriffs in Louisiana and Virginia will be elected in 2023, creating a window for local jails to draw more public attention.

Note that Pennsylvania sheriffs have far more limited powers than elsewhere as they typically do not run local jails, which are managed directly or indirectly by other local offices, many of which are on the ballot in 2023. A string of deaths at the Allegheny County jail, located in Pittsburgh, and complaints that the lockup is violating a voter-approved ban on solitary confinement are now issues set to define the race for the county’s next chief executive.

3. Will immigrants’ rights advocates continue to curtail local collaboration with ICE?

When Donald Trump was president, voters in Democratic-leaning counties ousted public officials who cooperated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But ICE forged new relationships with Southern jails to make up for it, and sheriffs rushed to profit off renting vacant jail space for ICE to detain migrants and asylum-seekers. In 2023, nearly all sheriffs will be on the ballot in Louisiana and Mississippi, states that  proved to be difficult terrain for critics of those ICE arrangements four years ago.

Still, immigrants’ rights advocates have opportunities in some blue-leaning areas to build on their 2022 successes and elect new officials who oppose collaborating with ICE.

Just four counties with 2023 sheriff races participate in ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to act like federal immigration agents in jails. Three of them voted for Joe Biden over Trump: Duval County (Jacksonville), Florida; East Baton Rouge Parish (Baton Rouge), Louisiana; and Rensselaer County (Troy), New York. (The fourth, which voted for Trump, is Culpeper County, Virginia.)

Still, recent history suggests that efforts to curtail cooperation with ICE will be tricky in all three blue-leaning counties. Republicans defended the sheriff’s office in Duval in a special election just last month. In East Baton Rouge, the GOP sheriff easily prevailed in 2019 with endorsements from prominent Democratic officials. And in Rensselaer, the only county in all of New York State that’s part of the 287(g) program, the Republican incumbent ran entirely unopposed four years ago.

4. Will there be more interest in city halls to reform policing?

Since the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the most ambitious electoral platforms for changing or reducing policing have emerged at the municipal level—but so has the most stringent backlash. In the absence of federal elections, 2023 may be the year those dynamics again take front stage with many of the nation’s biggest cities set to hold mayoral races, including five cities of more than one million: Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, and San Antonio. Many others will vote for their city councils.

These elections will feature incumbents who have tended to clash with protesters, such as Chicago’s incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot; Democrats with a tough-on-crime reputation, such as John Whitmire, a Texas state senator running for Houston mayor; and candidates who have championed shifting resources from policing to other social services, such as Leslie Herod, who is running for mayor in Denver, or Cabán and other left-leaning council members who are up for re-election in New York. Watch out for whatever contrasts emerge around police budgets and ordinances that criminalize homelessness.

5. Will reform initiatives survive state elections in the South? 

In 2023, the elections that may change who runs state governments will largely be concentrated in the South, and the GOP has room to extend their power in what’s already their strongest region. 

In Virginia, the GOP governor and attorney general’s tough-on-crime posturing have run into the Democratic-run state Senate, which has rejected the former’s appointments to the parole board and killed the latter’s proposal to crack down against the state’s reform prosecutors. Should they flip the Senate in 2023, the GOP would gain full control of the state government and could press forward on those matters. 

In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear will seek a second term in difficult conditions given the state’s conservative bent. On his third day in office, he issued an executive order enabling hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians with felony convictions to vote; his re-election bid may decide the fate of his initiative since the GOP has reversed a similar one in the past.

The GOP also hopes to gain full control of Louisiana’s government; Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards cannot run for a third term, in a state where a short-lived bipartisan agreement to lower incarceration shattered within years of him signing a landmark reform package in 2017. 

6. How will judicial elections shape criminal punishment in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?

In 2021, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia progressives made the unusual choice of organizing around local judicial races, and it paid off with a wave of wins by candidates who ran on curtailing bail and reducing incarceration. Next year, there will be more elections for the local bench in both places. 

Also in 2023, all Pennsylvanians will get to vote in a supreme court election to replace Max Baer, a Democratic justice who died this fall. The court, which is sure to retain a Democratic majority, has vacillated on criminal justice matters. One of Baer’s final opinions came in a September ruling that brought relief to defendants with mental illness, though the court has also disappointed reformers by rejecting cases challenging the death penalty or felony murder statutes. 

While Pennsylvania’s election won’t be resolved until November, one of the year’s most important races looms in April: A state supreme court seat on the ballot in Wisconsin may hand the majority to the liberal wing. Such a flip would affect criminal justice cases that have long divided Wisconsin justices, but the fate of the state’s 1849 abortion ban also looms large. Wisconsin’s staunchly GOP legislature is locked into place by aggressive gerrymanders; unlike neighboring Michigan, there is no mechanism for citizens to put a popular initiative on the ballot. That leaves state litigation, and April’s judicial election, as a rare path for Wisconsinites to curtail the policing of reproductive rights. 

The post What Off Year? Hundreds of Local Elections Will Define Criminal Justice Policy in 2023 appeared first on Bolts.

On Monday, Janet DiFiore, the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, announced that she will be resigning this August. The news stunned much of New York’s political establishment and offered Governor Kathy Hochul, who will nominate DiFiore’s replacement, the chance to reshape the Court of Appeals for years to come.

The court has taken a sharp turn to the right over the last year, New York Focus reported last week. DiFiore leads a group of four conservative judges who have voted as a bloc in 96 of the 98 cases in the seven-member court’s most recent term, giving it control over essentially all the court’s decisions.

In that time, this bloc has issued a slew of rulings favoring law enforcement, large corporations, and landlords over defendants, employees, consumers, and tenants. DiFiore and her three allies—Anthony Cannataro, Michael Garcia, and Madeline Singas—have also been responsible for a sharp drop in the court’s overall caseload, and particularly in the number of criminal appeals that the court hears, experts say. 

This conservative majority was expected to remain in control of the court until at least 2025, the year DiFiore would have had to leave the court due to turning 70, New York’s mandatory retirement age for judges. DiFiore offered no reason for her sudden resignation on Monday. But Law360 reported that she is currently the subject of an ethics investigation for interfering in the disciplinary process for a court officer who threatened to post flyers critical of her on court buildings.

If Hochul were to appoint a judge who is more progressive than DiFiore, it could flip the court’s ideological balance on key issues. 

“We’re clearly trying to avoid having our own version of the U.S. Supreme Court here in New York,” Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the state Senate, told Bolts and New York Focus. “Under DiFiore’s leadership, that’s where this Court was headed. So I’m glad she’s resigning.”

Hochul’s pick for DiFiore’s replacement will need to be confirmed by the Senate to join the bench. Democrats hold a supermajority in the chamber, and many cheered the news of DiFiore’s resignation. Prominent senators urged Hochul to nominate a liberal or progressive replacement, as did the State Assembly’s influential Speaker.

But Democrats are also largely responsible for the court’s current makeup. All four judges in its majority bloc are appointees of former Governor Andrew Cuomo. The then-GOP-run Senate acted unanimously in 2016 to approve DiFiore, who at the time was a Democratic district attorney. 

And just a year ago, Senate Democrats voted overwhelmingly to confirm Singas, another tough-on-crime prosecutor, despite a progressive effort to block her confirmation. Singas has since voted with DiFiore in every single case the two judges have ruled on. 

One prominent senator said on Monday that he regretted that vote.

“It was a mistake to support Madeline Singas’ confirmation,” said Gianaris, who last year rallied his colleagues to support her. “She has become part of a majority bloc on the Court of Appeals that is issuing decisions that move us in the wrong direction.”

Asked about DiFiore’s retirement, Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the court system, sent Bolts and New York Focus a statement: “While many people in government hold on the end [sic], that is not the case here. Now it is simply time for the Chief Judge’s next challenge in her professional and personal life. It is illustrative in one’s being aware that it’s not knowing when the right time is to get on the merry go round, but knowing when the right time is to get off [sic].”

“Time for a new direction”

On Monday, numerous Democratic senators publicly called for Hochul to nominate a more liberal replacement for DiFiore, reflecting growing concern within the chamber over the court’s conservative direction as well as frustration with the court’s majority bloc for ruling that Democrat-drawn legislative maps were an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

“I think it’s time for a new direction on the court,” said Senator Brad Hoylman, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hoylman called on Hochul to nominate a replacement “focused on equitable outcomes for New Yorkers.” Gianaris also said he hopes to see a nominee “more interested in and more appreciative of the struggles of everyday New Yorkers” than DiFiore.

Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that she “strongly urge[s]” Hochul to nominate a public defender. 

Four of the court’s current members are former prosecutors, while none have significant experience as defense lawyers. This reflects a common imbalance in state supreme courts around the country, Bolts reported in March, despite a major push in recent years to get governors to appoint more public defenders to the bench.

Multiple senators also said that the recent conservative rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court have amplified their concern over the Court of Appeals.

State Senator Andrew Gounardes, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he hopes for a nominee who will “make New York a bulwark against the deterioration of rights” caused by recent Supreme Court rulings. Among other matters, the New York court could be called to clarify whether the state’s constitution enshrines abortion rights. 

Like Gianaris, Gounardes voted in favor of confirming Singas. Gounardes said that he has felt “disappointment with some of the decisions” issued by the majority bloc. But he said that he does not regret supporting Singas based on the information that was available at the time.

“No one foresaw what would be happening at the national level,” he said, referring to recent decisions from the Supreme Court. “No one could foresee just how important state government would be.”

At the time of her nomination last year, Singas was already known as a leading critic of the landmark 2019 criminal justice reforms that reshaped the state’s bail system and evidence rules. Reform advocates warned loudly then that her nomination could shrink the rights of criminal defendants. While their efforts were unsuccessful, they did focus public attention on the court’s increasing conservatism.

Lingering DiFiore influence?

When Hochul nominates a replacement for DiFiore, she will do so by picking a nominee from a shortlist of seven candidates prepared by the Commission on Judicial Nominations, a committee tasked with soliciting and reviewing applications for vacancies on the Court of Appeals.

DiFiore selected four of the commission’s 12 current members, and Cuomo, a close ally of DiFiore, selected another three. The term of one of the Cuomo appointees, Abraham Lackman, expired in March, but he still serves as a commissioner, according to the Commission’s website. A spokesperson for Hochul did not respond by press time to a question on whether she plans to replace Lackman before the Commission selects the shortlist for DiFiore’s replacement.

Eight votes are required to place a potential nominee on the shortlist—just one more than the number currently controlled by DiFiore’s and Cuomo’s appointees. 

“Even from beyond office, Cuomo and DiFiore will have a hand in shaping the composition of the Court of Appeals,” said Noah Rosenblum, professor at New York University Law School and a former clerk at the Court of Appeals. 

Once Hochul makes her pick from the shortlist, the nominee will go before the Senate for confirmation. The Senate has never rejected a nomination to the court, and confirmations have generally not been highly contentious—at least not until Singas’s last year.

Absent a nominee as polarizing as Singas, it’s not clear that the Senate is likely to mount significant opposition to whomever Hochul picks.

When Hochul was preparing to select her first nominee to the Court last fall, 10 Senators penned a letter calling on her to nominate a public defender to the open seat. When Hochul instead picked Shirley Troutman, then a lower court judge and previously a prosecutor, nine of those Senators still voted to confirm. (Troutman has since become the closest thing to a swing vote the court has, sometimes ruling in the majority along with the conservative bloc, and sometimes dissenting along with Jenny Rivera and Rowan Wilson, the court’s two consistent liberals.)

Gianaris declined to say whether the Senate might reject Hochul’s nominee if she nominates someone in the mold of DiFiore. “I’m more hopeful that Governor Hochul will herself appreciate the gravity of the moment and that won’t become necessary,” he said.

Steering the court

The court’s conservatism under DiFiore is out of step with its historic norm, according to Vincent Bonventre, professor at Albany Law School and an expert in the Court of Appeals. Under the three chief judges who preceded DiFiore, “the court was way out in front of most courts in the country in protecting rights and liberties,” he said.

Before Singas and Cannataro joined the court last year, DiFiore didn’t have a consistent ally other than Garcia, who is the court’s lone Republican (though he, too, was appointed by Cuomo). Singas and Cannataro replaced two judges who were known to be swing votes, and who sometimes sided with the court’s two liberal judges.

As the court has tacked to the right, it has also become less interested in explaining the reasoning behind its decisions. The court did not issue a formal opinion in the majority of last year’s cases, but instead published short “memorandums” that offer only brief explanations of the majority’s thinking.

“They are so incredibly superficial,” Bonventre said of the memorandums. “I think it doesn’t show much respect for the judges that are in dissent.”

A new chief judge will have enormous influence on the trajectory of the Court of Appeals and also on the broader practices of New York courts, since they will serve as the chief administrator of the entire system, and will have the ability to appoint administrators and set policy for hundreds of lower courts. 

“The chief judge, by and large, has been able to steer the court in the ideological direction that the chief judge prefers,” Bonventre said. 

The post New York’s Chief Judge Resigns, Breaking Up High Court’s Right-Leaning Majority appeared first on Bolts.

On Monday, more than 6,000 people incarcerated in New York prisons lost their right to regularly receive care packages by mail or in person from family and friends.

The state prison agency is piloting the new restrictions at eight prisons, with plans to expand them to the rest. Under the policy, family and friends are no longer allowed to bring their loved ones packages of food when they come to visit or to send them through the mail, and can’t send more than two non-food packages each year. Everything else must be purchased and sent through private companies willing to ship to prisons.

Incarcerated people say the new restrictions will cut off a lifeline. “Am I going to be prevented from getting winter clothes if I get a book from my mom in the summer?” asked Jeremy Zielinski, currently incarcerated at Attica, in a phone call with New York Focus and Bolts.

An April 25 memo to the incarcerated population from acting Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Commissioner Anthony Annucci, obtained by Bolts and New York Focus, says the new policy is a response to “an increase in violence and overdoses due to the introduction of contraband through the package room, specifically, illicit drugs and weapons.”

Whether or not mailrooms are a major entrypoint for contraband is the subject of much debate. There is ample evidence nationwide of corrections officers bringing drugs, weapons, and other contraband into prisons and jails; in the last two years, multiple New York City corrections officers faced charges for allegedly smuggling contraband into jails in exchange for cash. In 2020, Texas corrections officials limited mail to curb the contraband problem. One year later, an investigation revealed no impact on the amount of drugs circulating in state prisons. 

A prison agency spokesperson declined to provide data on how often the security staff that screen packages in New York have identified contraband, or how that rate has changed over time. The new package policy is based on a recommendation from the agency’s Prison Violence Task Force, composed of prison staff, administrators, and representatives of the correction officers union.

Annucci, who leads the prison agency, has been acting commissioner since 2013. Governor Kathy Hochul appointed him as commissioner, but he has yet to be confirmed as lawmakers from both parties raised concerns over high death rates and other issues in prisons under his watch. Hochul did not respond to a request for comment.

A Revived Program

The new restrictions are a revived version of a stalled 2018 initiative, the “Secure Vendor Package Program,” which would have required all packages to be sent from six approved private companies. Those prison-specific vendors offered limited selections at steep markups, with prices as much as 130 percent higher than on the outside. After immense pushback, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo directed the agency to halt the program after just 10 days.

“I did 12 years in prison. My whole time in prison, I’ve never received a package from a vendor,” says Michael Capers, who was incarcerated at Upstate, Franklin, and Fishkill Correctional Facilities. “And the reason being is because it’s too expensive. So my family, I told them I’d rather have nothing than to make them pay extra money.”

New York is one of the few states that still permits non-vendor packages to be sent to incarcerated people at all. The majority of state correctional departments have entered contracts with private package companies, including New York. “Reintroducing the secure vendor program is an unfortunate and avoidable step in the direction that so many other corrections agencies across the country have gone,” says Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, the state’s legally designated prison monitor.

While the 2018 program only allowed certain approved vendors, the new program doesn’t force people to choose from a limited list. Instead, it doesn’t define “vendor” at all. But Wilfredo Laracuente, who was released from Sing Sing Correctional Facility in July, predicted that the new policy will offer little more choice than its predecessor.

“A lot of the families, they use Walmart, they use Target, they use Western Beef, they use Shoprite, they use Tops, they use Wegmans. The majority of these places don’t ship directly to correctional facilities,” Laracuente said. “If we can’t really get the items that we need to go ahead and shop for our family members, then we have to use the six vendors that were originally introduced to use.”

Mainstream retailers sometimes send shipments in multiple packages, which can violate limitations on the weight and number of packages incarcerated people are allowed to receive. These logistical factors can compel loved ones of incarcerated people to use prison-specific vendors, in spite of high costs and extremely limited inventory. 

Families and friends will also have to shoulder costs associated with vendor packages beyond the markups: they won’t be able to use food stamps, coupons, donated food, or to avoid shipping costs by bringing packages during visits.

“I don’t get why they’re treating this population of people differently than the rest of the New Yorkers, like we don’t need every cent that we earn, every cent that we bring into our household,” says Indira Bowen, whose husband is incarcerated at Sing Sing. “Most of us can’t handle this extra expense out of nowhere.”

Food Shortages

The new restrictions will also make it harder for incarcerated people to access fresh and healthy food. “Food packages from family members, friends, and community groups are the primary way for incarcerated people to maintain a healthy diet while incarcerated,” the members of a group of farmers and family members that provides fresh food to incarcerated people wrote in an open letter about the new directive.

Food packages supplement the limited offerings in prison, which Zielinski describes as “meeting the constitutional minimum, just barely.” A 2021 survey by the Correctional Association found that more than 90 percent of incarcerated New Yorkers report that the food they’re offered is bland and tasteless, that they sometimes skip meals as a result, and that they prefer food received in packages or purchased through the commissary.

Even among commissary options, the pickings are slim. “The fresh vegetables currently offered in the commissary at Green Haven and Fishkill are limited to two: onions and garlic (we hear that these items are often rotten),” advocates wrote in the open letter. “The ‘fruit’ available is limited to one item: a fruit cup. Currently that fruit cup is on the ‘out of stock’ list at Fishkill.” 

In a statement to New York Focus, DOCCS officials said they plan to expand fresh produce offerings in all prisons as they roll out the new package restrictions. They also highlighted the prices for prison commissary: at Attica, bananas are 16 cents each, heads of lettuce are $2.63, a bag of onions costs $1.20, tomatoes are 42 cents, a two-pack of garlic is 45 cents, and green peppers are $1.12.

But incarcerated workers only earn between 16 cents and 65 cents an hour, making even seemingly reasonable prices out of reach for many incarcerated people unless family or friends deposit money into their commissary accounts — a financial burden that many are unable to shoulder. In the survey, more than 85 percent of incarcerated people said that the quality of food they can access is limited by their family’s finances.

“There are so many people whose families live on paycheck to paycheck and are on food stamps,” wrote a woman currently incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in a letter forwarded to Bolts and New York Focus. Jennifer Fecu, who was formerly incarcerated at Bedford Hills, agreed: “It’s already hard to send things in when we’re not making any money. We’re just drawing from people that are already struggling.”

Jalal Sabur is a founder of Sweet Freedom Farm in Germantown, a group that grows and distributes produce to people in prisons. Sweet Freedom sets up farm stands outside prisons, where they hand out packages of fresh food for visitors to bring into the facilities. (The new policy includes an exception for licensed charities, but Sabur’s group is not a registered non-profit.)

“Now, no one can actually bring those packages in,” Sabur said. “So that whole program that we’ve been doing, we can’t do anymore.” 

An Officer Backlash?

Before the memo hit prison cells, notice of the updated package directive appeared in the April 20 New York State Register, which provides weekly updates on rulemaking changes by state agencies. The new package restrictions were included in a series of amendments with the stated purpose “to revise regulations to be in compliance with the new HALT legislation and applicable laws,” referring to the enactment of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act, a law that ended long-term solitary confinement and took effect on April 1 of this year.

The correction officer’s union, which fiercely opposed HALT and is suing to overturn it in court, has argued that the new restrictions on solitary confinement are leading to an increase in violence against officers. In recent months, it has urged the state to revive the package ban as one way to protect officers against that violence — and participated on the task force that recommended the new policy.

“Despite the best efforts by security staff, contraband still filters into the hands of inmates at facilities, whether it be through drug-soaked papers or creatively hidden inside of candy wrappers and other packaged foods,” a union spokesperson told New York Focus and Bolts. “Through [the union’s] participation in the recently formed Prison Violence Task Force, we are working with DOCCS to pilot a new vendor program aimed specifically at curtailing drugs from entering facilities through the prison mail system.”

That has raised the suspicion among incarcerated people and advocates that the package policy may be a way for the state to placate a disgruntled union.

“I do wonder if there’s a way in which the department is attempting to roll out this secure vendor program as a way of quelling some of the concerns that they’re hearing from the union around the implications of, for example, the HALT solitary act,” Scaife said. “If [corrections officers] are expressing concerns about HALT and DOCCS can’t do anything about it because it’s the law, packages are something that’s within their control.”

“HALT stopped the Department of Corrections from weaponizing solitary confinement and weaponizing long term confinement,” said Joseph Wilson, who’s currently incarcerated at Sing Sing. “So now the officers inside are upset that they no longer can use these particular things as a deterrent for certain types of behavior. This package ban indicates that they’re trying to regain control.”

Packages have long been a thorn in the side of corrections officers. Sorting through each package is time-consuming, and package rooms are an additional role to fill in a prison system that officers say is understaffed. The process is subject to lengthy delays: Scaife said she often hears stories of incarcerated people receiving home-baked cookies or other perishable items weeks after they were sent, spoiled by the time they’re received. 

When the secure vendor program was shut down in 2018, Zielinski said he often heard corrections staff express frustration. “For weeks you heard them saying stuff like, ‘I can’t believe they’re treating these guys like this, giving them all this stuff.’ It’s almost like they’re incensed or offended that we’re being treated like human beings,” he said.

In the absence of data on how much contraband is getting in through packages, measuring the policy’s impact will be difficult. Scaife is skeptical that it will meaningfully reduce the amount of contraband or violence in prisons.

“Are we going to see the same amount of contraband after the policy is introduced? I fear that we might,” she said. “Prisons are porous, and if you’re going to keep taking away privileges and pieces of people’s humanity, you’re still going to have the same problems of violence and unpredictable reactions to drugs inside, because these are a function of people being incarcerated.”

Zielinksi suggested that restricting people’s access to packages could heighten the frustrations and tensions that lead to violence in the first place. “It would be an understatement to say that people are very upset about this,” he said. “It seems like a really dumb idea considering the history of this place. I don’t think they want Attica [uprising] 2.0.”

“I think DOCCS is grossly underestimating how important packages are to people,” he continued. “They’re going to cause more problems than they’re trying to solve. And the problems that they’re trying to solve aren’t going to be solved by eliminating packages from home, because anybody who wants to get stuff in is going to get it in anyway. All it’s going to do is make quality of life lower for everybody else.”

The post New York Bans Most Prison Care Packages from Family and Friends appeared first on Bolts.

On a rainy Saturday evening, I rode with Jose LaSalle as he zoomed around the Bronx in his blue Honda Odyssey while a radio transmitter crackled with police chatter. LaSalle took a sharp turn when he heard officers responding to a new call—“female Black, male Black, female Black” and  “10:34,” the code for assault—and started racing toward the scene. As he pulled up, the call faded from the radio as officers determined it was a woman with a taser, not a gun, and the caller wouldn’t cooperate.  

LaSalle spotted a sleek gray sedan with tinted windows driving away from the scene and took a sharp u-turn to follow it, saying, “There they are.” “They” is a patrol unit of the new Neighborhood Safety Teams, a revamped version of the old plain-clothes units—now wearing clothes with NYPD insignia instead of civilian attire, but still patrolling in unmarked cars like this one. “They’re out here fighting crime in a way that’s unsafe for civilians,” LaSalle says of the new “safety teams,” the latest iteration of NYPD’s old plainclothes units, disbanded in 2020 by Dermot Shea in what the former police commissioner called a move away from “brute force.”

“It creates an environment of hate,” LaSalle says. 

LaSalle, who founded the Copwatch Patrol Unit, one of several cop-watching units in New York City, is trying to monitor the revival of a controversial police tactic in the city. The old plainclothes regularly administered beatings, made false arrests, manhandled residents in illegal stops, and played key roles in virtually every high-profile police killing going back decades—Sean Bell, Eric Garner, Amadou Diallo, Saheed Vassell, Kimani Gray. 

Less than two years after they were disbanded, however, Mayor Eric Adams relaunched them, renaming them Neighborhood Safety Teams (NSTs). During a March 21 address, Adams told the plainclothes officers to balance safety and justice. “Do it right. Don’t violate the liberties of people, but go after those guns and those who are the trigger pullers and dangerous in our city,” he said.  

Despite the stern speeches, Adams hasn’t introduced new measures to prevent the units from abusing civilians other than outfitting them with body worn cameras, a less than ideal solution. A George Mason University meta-analysis of 70 body camera studies determined that the devices don’t substantially change police behavior. Cameras can be obscured or turned off, allowing officers to easily evade accountability.

Police commissioner Keechant Sewell assured during a March 11 press conference that specialized training for NST officers includes added instruction in the Constitution and “community interaction.” Police chief Ken Corey said the new plainclothes units are “intensively trained in minimal-force techniques, advanced tactics, car stops.” Corey added, “De-escalation is essential to all of it, communication skills is a big part of it.” 

LaSalle, who estimates his Copwatch group has about 50 members tracking police around the city, has named their new efforts to monitor the police units “Operation Wolfpack.” Their mission is to follow their activities as well as identify the officers who comprise the units, the sergeants who supervise them, and investigate their previous records.

LaSalle worries the pressure the Adams administration has put on the new plainclothes units to turn up guns will spur them to use abusive tactics. Despite their clear directive to focus on guns, data obtained by City and State shows that the majority of arrests by NST officers have been for nonviolent crimes like drug possession and driving with a suspended license. 

So far, LaSalle appears to have identified more than a dozen officers in the Neighborhood Safety Teams, which altogether include 470 officers. NYPD records for most of the badge numbers LaSalle sent me after filming the plainclothes units show the officers participating in the specialized NST training, which lasts 7 days. All the officers LaSalle identified who have received NST training also have complaints against them on file with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), which investigates allegations of misconduct, according to a review of disciplinary records—with allegations including strip searches, physical force, illegal stop and frisk, body cavity searches, which the NYPD strictly forbids, denying medical treatment. A sergeant who leads one of the teams has a DUI on his record. Court filings show that nearly all of the officers LaSalle identified have been the subject of lawsuits resulting in the city spending thousands of dollars on legal costs and settlements. A lawsuit involving one of the officers who received training for the new plainclothes units alleges he was part of a group of police who slammed a woman into the ground so hard her top came undone, exposing her breasts, and then lifted her legs up to show her underwear while calling her racist slurs like the N-word and “project girl.” 

Neither NYPD nor the mayor’s office answered my questions about the vetting process for the NST units, or the disciplinary histories of officers who have undergone NST training. 

Council Member Tiffany Cabán says that when she met with one of the safety teams in her district last month, she found that they’d gotten little beyond standard training for all officers. 

“I was extremely troubled by my meeting with the 114th Precinct’s newly revived so-called “anti-crime” unit,” Cabán told me. “Contrary to all the public relations hype about the unprecedented preparation the plainclothes officers have received, the officers’ reports to me revealed that they have received virtually no training beyond that which is required for all officers.” She found that they were confused by their relationship to neighborhood violence prevention groups, even though collaboration between violence interrupters and police are a key facet of Adams’ “Blueprint to End Gun Violence.” 

“Far from allaying my concerns, the meeting only intensified my belief that this is a return to tactics that have failed to keep us safe, while subjecting Black and brown New Yorkers to violence, all too often lethal” Cabán said.  

At a press conference in March intended to give a detailed picture of the new plainclothes units, a reporter asked Chief Corey if any of the officers had previously served in the plainclothes units. “I don’t know,” he responded, then told the reporter she should look into it. If city officials know the answer, they are not keen to share it. When I emailed the NYPD, they told me to ask the mayor’s office; when I asked the Mayor’s office, they told me to ask the NYPD. 

If the new units are full of cops from the previous, violent version of the city’s plainclothes squads, LaSalle says it would undermine the mayor’s staunch insistence that NST officers have been strictly vetted and picked based on their mental stability and clean disciplinary records. 

NYPD has a history of staffing plain clothes units with officers who have a long, troubling history of citizen complaints. As I reported last month for New York Focus, more than 200 officers have been named in lawsuits involving the now-disbanded Street Crime Unit. Compared to the rest of the NYPD, their records are long and disturbing, including allegations of planting evidence and lying to prosecutors. 

At least 206 NYPD officers who worked in plainclothes have CCRB complaints logged against them. Meanwhile, a handful have racked up so many complaints, you might think it was a competition: 100 complaints for detective Mathew Reich, 95 for Gary Messina, 65 for Henry Daverin, 54 for Anthony Ronda and 50 for Eric Dym. In a lawsuit that resulted in a $178,000 settlement, a group of officers under Dym’s supervision were accused of charging into a man’s home while in civilian clothes, beating him, breaking open a door with his body, spraying him with pepper spray, putting him in a chokehold—all in front of his infant son—then framing him for possession of marijuana. The CCRB process substantiated seven of the complaints for Reich, six for Messina, eight for Daverin, six for Ronda, and ten for Dym—meaning “sufficient credible evidence to believe that the subject officer committed the alleged act without legal justification.” (Unsubstantiated complaints don’t necessarily absolve an officer, since in many cases people who file CCRB complaints stop cooperating before officials reach a decision.) 

In the most expensive lawsuit against Reich—resulting in a $400,000 settlement—he and a group of men “who later identified themselves as police officers” were accused of battery and false arrest. Another lawsuit claims a group of plainclothes officers including Gary Messina accused an innocent woman of murder after interogating her for 72 hours without an attorney present. 

Detective David Grieco, known as Bullethead (79 complaints), recently hit a dubious milestone: he’s been sued 23 times, The Daily News recently reported.  

“Where’s the guns? Where’s the drugs?” he allegedly yelled at a family with a 5-year-old child, after he and other plainclothes officers burst into their home while they were asleep.

LaSalle started his Copwatch group after his 14-year-old son, Alvin, began to complain about police harassment. “Take your earphones out, be aware of the situation around you, and record. Everything,” he told his stepson. Alvin followed his advice. The next time he was stopped by officers, and asked them why, and they replied by calling him a “filthy fucking mutt,” the interaction was recorded on his phone. 

LaSalle says not much has changed since 2011, pointing out that teenagers of color still feel “hunted and hated” by police.

The tactic—record everything—also saved LaSalle and helped him administer a humiliating blow to the department. In 2016, he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct while filming a police stop. When he was brought to the precinct, a sergeant grabbed his radio. LaSalle had disabled a wire that allowed for two way transmission, but that didn’t stop the officers from claiming the gadget was capable of breaking into and sabotaging police conversations and charging him with illegally possessing a device to transmit over police frequencies. 

“Oh you a felon now!” the officer exclaimed, as the other cops cheered and clapped. “It’s a party!” an officer shouted, while others clapped. Unbeknownst to them, LaSalle had recorded the whole thing. He went on to win a $860,000 settlement in his lawsuit against the city accusing the police (including Eric Dym) of false arrest, imprisonment, and conspiracy.

Suffice it to say, the Adams’ administration and NYPD are not big fans of LaSalle or Copwatch.  In March, Adams delivered a tirade against civilians who record police, which he said has “gotten out of control.” 

“Stop being on top of our police officers as they’re trying to do their jobs,” Adams said. “There have been officers on the ground and had people standing over them with a camera while they’re wrestling someone. If an officer is trying to prevent a dispute from taking place, they shouldn’t have someone standing over the shoulder with a camera in their face, yelling and screaming at them without even realizing what the encounter is all about.” 

LaSalle doesn’t scream, and he keeps his distance. He trains other Copwatchers to clearly and calmly assert their constitutional rights to film police in public. That night, after we witnessed police address a domestic violence incident, LaSalle told me that he never records those situations out of respect for the victims. “Instead, I just listen,” he says. 

The week before I joined LaSalle, he’d filmed an officer sticking a gun in a teenager’s stomach. LaSalle admits that the kid wound up having a gun on him, but shuddered at what might have happened if the officer discharged his weapon. On the recording, you can hear an officer yelling at him to back off as he films the incident from across the street.

After he finished driving me around the Bronx, LaSalle planned to head to East New York in Brooklyn to monitor officers in the 75th precinct, which has the highest number of complaints in all of New York City. Sometimes he pulls 12 hour shifts. 

“I’m always studying them,” LaSalle said before dropping me off for the night. “It’s a game of cat and mouse. … Police chase everyone in the community, and we chase them.” 

The post Activists Monitor the Revival of New York’s Notorious Plainclothes Police Squads appeared first on Bolts.

If anyone were too sick for prison, Jose Medina thought, it would be him.

Medina was 27 years old when he entered New York’s prison system. Four decades later, at 68, he’s still behind bars—and afraid that he may die there.   

In 2005, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which necessitated a complete removal of his left lung and a partial removal of his right lung. He survived the cancer, but was left with chronic respiratory disease and severe emphysema. He now depends on inhalers and, at times, a breathing machine. The following year, he applied for medical parole.

His request was denied. 

In 2014, doctors diagnosed Medina with prostate cancer. He now needs a catheter and multiple medications. Five years later, in 2019, the Defenders Clinic Second Look Project at the City University of New York submitted an application for clemency, or a request to the governor to shorten his 50-to-life sentence, on Medina’s behalf.

He never received a response, not even an acknowledgement of receipt. His legal team, headed by Steve Zeidman, sent a follow-up letter on March 16, 2020, two days after the first Covid death in New York—of a woman who, like Medina, had emphysema.  

“There’s every indication that he’s the exact sort of person to be most terrified about Covid. He told us he wouldn’t even leave his cell, he was just that terrified,” Zeidman said.

Four days later, the legal team sent another letter, this time requesting medical parole. 

On May 15, the prison agency denied the request. “It has been deemed that he is not an appropriate candidate for Medical Parole,” stated the letter, signed by the Department of Correction and Community Supervision (DOCCS)’s chief medical officer John Morley. The letter did not say why Medina was deemed ineligible.

Incarcerated New Yorkers applying for medical parole go through a lengthy process bookended by a medical evaluation at the outset and a final review by the parole board. How decisions are made at these two stages is opaque, but what’s in between is even more of a black box. Two officials within the prison agency—its chief medical officer, Morley, and its head, Acting Commissioner Anthony Annucci—reject many applications after they’ve passed their medical evaluations and before they’ve reached the board, typically with little explanation.

Their refusals have frustrated legal advocates, who question the murky criteria that prevent their clients from at least obtaining a board hearing where they can press their case. Annucci is already under heavy fire for conditions in New York prisons and the approximately 1,000 deaths that have occurred on his watch.

Medina is one of the people whose application got caught in this middle stage. Last November, he was diagnosed with glaucoma in his left eye, causing him pain and blurry vision, which makes moving around difficult. The CUNY legal team is currently gathering records for an independent medical review in preparation for a third medical parole request on his behalf.

Still locked up, afraid he will lose his eyesight completely, afraid he will never meet his daughter outside prison walls, Medina describes “the sad and painful reality of dying alone in a cold dark prison cell.”

“It is an unfortunate reality for all aging prisoners, especially those living with chronic medical conditions,” he told Bolts and New York Focus over email. “I only want to enjoy a moment at the beach with family, go to a movie theater, and experience a nice meal at an upscale restaurant before my departure.”

Most medical parole applications never make it to the parole board

Under New York law, the state parole board can grant medical parole to an incarcerated patient certified by the prison agency as suffering from a malady that renders them “so debilitated or incapacitated as to create a reasonable probability that he or she is physically or cognitively incapable of presenting any danger to society.”

In 2020, as Covid-19 exploded in the prison system, DOCCS received an enormous increase in medical parole requests—1,049 in total. It approved 18. 

In a statement to Bolts and New York Focus, a DOCCS spokesperson suggested that many of those applicants may not have been medically eligible. “As the law is currently written, concern that an individual with pre-existing conditions may contract COVID and be at an increased risk for a severe and possibly fatal outcome, is not a basis for medical parole,” the spokesperson said.

In 2021, the number of medical parole applications dropped dramatically, to 82. Of those, 10 people were released.

Applying for medical parole involves many steps. After an incarcerated person or someone on their behalf (such as a family member, attorney, or prison staff member) files an initial request, it must pass four distinct reviews: first by prison clinical staff, who conduct a medical evaluation; then by the DOCCS chief medical officer, who assesses the medical evaluation and the applicant’s risk to public safety; then by DOCCS acting commissioner Annucci; and finally, if the request has made it this far, by the state’s parole board.

If the application makes it to this final stage, the board holds a “medical parole hearing,” with an opportunity for the prosecutor, defense attorneys, sentencing court and the Office of Victim Assistance to provide input. From 2013 to 2017, records obtained by the Vera Institute of Justice show, the board granted medical parole about two-thirds of the time, well over its overall parole approval rate of 23 percent in 2015. 

But the vast majority of applications never make it that far.

According to Vera’s report, 476 requests for medical parole were filed between 2013 and 2017. Only 240 were approved by prison staff. Even then, only about half of the remaining pool made it to the parole board. Either the chief medical officer or the commissioner rejected many of those cases, though in some the applicant died while waiting, was released on another form of parole, or completed their sentence. 

Applications that are denied by the DOCCS leadership are typically issued form letters signed by the chief medical officer, currently Morley. (The chief medical officer is hired by DOCCS and supervised by its commissioner.) The letters give no reason for the denial—just that “it has been deemed that you are not an appropriate candidate for Medical Parole.” 

Zeidman shared a letter sent to one applicant that was originally addressed to another person. That name had been crossed out and his hand-written in. The man died three weeks later.

Last year, a state judge required Morley to explain why he denied the application of Wilfredo Lopez. Lopez had been diagnosed with amyloidosis, and a prison physician had identified the condition as terminal, giving him one to two years to live. 

Morley explained to the court why he didn’t consider that grounds for medical parole: “‘Terminal’ suggests a life expectancy of 6 months or less. Mr. Lopez is alive and continues to ambulate with a cane around Greene Correctional Facility.” 

Asked what factors go into Morley and Annucci’s decision to deny medical parole applications advanced by others, a DOCCS spokesperson referred New York Focus and Bolts to their directive, which mentions that the medical officer advises the commissioner about the applicant’s medical status. They also said the commissioner looks “to ensure that the law is being adhered to and that a medical parole release would not put public safety at risk.” Prison staff are directed only to conduct a medical evaluation, and not assess public safety, the spokesperson said. The parole board, to which Annucci forwards applications, is also meant to consider safety, though. The department declined to comment on the decision to deny Medina’s medical parole application, stating that it cannot comment on an individual’s health record.

Annucci has led DOCCS since 2013, when then-Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed him, but—even though the position is subject to legislative oversight—he has never been confirmed by the legislature. Governor Kathy Hochul nominated Annucci for the permanent position, but the acting commissioner is now facing significant resistance. Last month, the relatives of ten men who have died in prison issued a joint statement slamming Annucci for, among other things, “the regressive policies that he has promulgated, the scourge of racism and brutality he has sought to sweep under the rug.”

Sometimes, the prison agency’s delays mean that even the few who are granted release still die behind bars. In 2019, the parole board granted medical parole to 75-year-old Edgardo Carlos Gonzalez, who had served 36 years of a 50-to-life sentence. Gonzalez had liver failure, dropping from 175 to 112 pounds, and had been placed in the prison’s hospice ward.

Gonzalez never made it home. Instead, he remained in prison waiting for DOCCS to approve his placement in his family’s home. He was rushed to the hospital, diagnosed with end-stage cancer and—three months after filing a request for medical parole—died in custody. 

Dying in prison is the outcome Medina is desperate to avoid.

In August 2020, Medina thought that might happen after he contracted Covid. His condition was so severe that he needed breathing treatments at the infirmary. “I felt as if I was going to die during that devastating experience,” he said.

He recovered, but his health continued to decline. The following August, he was rushed to the hospital. “My heart beat was so fast, over 100, that when I got to the hospital they had no knowledge as to what was wrong with me,” he said. Medical staff found that he had a lung infection and a blood infection. He was given a series of steroids and IV treatments and remained hospitalized for three days. 

Last month, on March 24, Medina began experiencing stomach pains, nausea, and heart pains. He said  that a prison nurse took his blood pressure and found he had an alarmingly high systolic pressure of 224, which required immediate emergency medical care. He was sent to a hospital and given an IV, hypertension medications, and a CAT scan. Medical staff diagnosed him with prostate and urine infections and determined that he would need gallbladder surgery. Once his blood pressure dropped to 150/80, Medina was sent back to prison. 

The next day, he said, his systolic blood pressure again soared to 220, and he was sent to a different hospital. He was treated and, once his blood pressure dropped, returned to the prison. 

The following morning, his blood pressure yet again rose to 207. He was rushed to a third hospital, Albany Medical Center, where he spent four days. He spent a fifth night in the prison’s infirmary before returning to his housing unit. He is still experiencing nausea and discomfort in his abdomen.

“My one and last chance to know my father” 

Medina signs his emails “Tony the Fighter.” That refers to his numerous illnesses and near-brushes with death, not the fighting of his younger years. 

“I’ve spent my majority of my life trying to be a better man,” he told Bolts and New York Focus in one email. He recognizes that, as a 26-year-old in 1980, he was angry, prone to violence, and struggling with heroin addiction, a fatal combination that led him to set fire to the apartment he shared with his girlfriend and stepson. Both died in the fire. 

“Not a day goes by in 43 years where I don’t wish the events that took place did not take place and that Laura and Richard were here today living beautiful lives as God intended,” he wrote.

In prison, Medina taught himself to read and write in both English and Spanish. He converted to Christianity, which he describes as a major turning point in his life. He now spends his time creating art and mentoring younger men—which he plans to continue if he’s released. “Being able to enter society now with the lessons I’ve learned would allow me to help other youth from ending up in the same position,” he said.

Studies show that the risk that people released from prison will commit new crimes dramatically declines with age. In New York, just one percent of people released from prison over the age of 65 were sent back to prison on a new conviction, nine times lower than the overall rate. 

In 2019, Medina connected with his only daughter, Elizabeth, then 47, who had been born while Medina had been incarcerated a previous time. That October, she visited him in prison, the first time the two had ever met. “We ate and took pictures and when it was time to say goodbye, the tears began to rain from my eyes,” Medina recalled. The following day, Elizabeth visited again, this time bringing a food package. 

Now, Elizabeth says that she wants to care for her father during his final years.  “We never had time, me and my father,” she said in a video plea to Governor Hochul. “He’s very sick. I need every minute…. This is my one and last chance to get to know my father.”

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