Report Calls for Parole 'Reforms' In Wake of More Inmate Deaths

Eddie Lee Mays, convicted in 1962 of capital murder for shooting and killing 31-year-old Maria Marini while he robbed patrons inside Harlem's Friendly Tavern a year earlier, is the last person to have been put to death by New York State authorities. 

His execution, on Aug. 15 1963, brought the state’s tally to 1,130, with the first dating to the early Colonial period, according to scholars. Until a divided Supreme Court found the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, that number ranked second-highest among states, after Virginia. 

1 Death Every 3 Days

But a recent report by the Columbia Center for Justice found that nearly that same number of people—1,278—have died while doing time in state jails during the last decade alone. 

The report, “New York State’s New Death Penalty,” also noted that an incarcerated person dies in a state jail every three days, four times the rate in 1976, when officials began tracking deaths in custody. 

“Deaths behind bars are not a reality we have to accept as a natural result of incarceration,” the report’s authors wrote. Along with “punitive sentencing” trends and “repeated parole denials” among the reasons for the elevated number of deaths behind bars, they also cited a University of Michigan sociologist’s study that found that a person’s life expectancy decreases by two years for every year spent behind bars. 

While the report’s authors wrote that all deaths of persons in custody “raise questions about the morality and humanity of the state and its governance,” they highlighted the deaths of black persons in jail, which account for about 45 percent of all deaths behind bars. Black inmates, though, make up about 48 percent of the jail population, according to state figures, meaning that deaths of black inmates are not disproportionate to the population. 

White Custody Deaths Rose

The percentage of white people who have died in custody, on the other hand, has risen steadily since the 1980s, when it hovered in the low 20s. It has nearly doubled since then, to 44 percent in the last decade, according to data cited by the Center. Whites, though, made up 24.5 percent of the jail population at the close of 2019, according to state figures.  

Still, the report noted that “[t]he large proportion of deaths of incarcerated Black New Yorkers highlight the racism of criminal-justice policy in the state, and how the need for racial justice is a matter of life and death.”

Among the inmate case studies presented in the report, the report noted the 2019 death, at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, of a convicted murderer who the authors say never received treatment for the cancer that ultimately killed her. Valerie Gaiter, who by some accounts had become a model prisoner, had served nearly 40 years in prison for killing an elderly Brooklyn couple while robbing them for drug money in 1979, was at the time of her death, at 61, the longest-serving woman in state jail. More-just policies, the authors wrote, would have let the Parole Board consider her “accomplishments and transformation...earlier in her life.”

Ms. Gaiter's accomplice, Roslyn Smith, was paroled in 2018 after having her sentence reduced.

'Least-Likely' to Re-Offend  

The report also found that about 40 percent of all deaths of persons aged 55 or older being held in state jails since 1976 have happened in the last decade, which the report’s authors suggested was at least in part a result of misguided public policy.

“Incarcerated adults aged 55 and older are the least likely to commit a new crime across all age groups, and yet are kept in prison due to a lack of meaningful opportunities for release and repeated parole denials,” they wrote. "Importantly, death by incarceration sentences and repeated parole denials ignore both the reality and possibility of redemption and transformation for people in prison.”

The number of older people dying in jail is significantly different than just a few decades ago, when younger and middle-aged people accounted for the majority of deaths, many of AIDS-related illnesses. But deaths among those in the 25-44 age group have declined since, and accounted for less than 20 percent of deaths behind bars in the last decade, the report found.

'Prison Exacerbates Issues'

“Sixty-five and older in the community translates to 55 and older in prison. Prison is stressful and can exacerbate issues,” the report quotes acting DOCCS Commissioner Anthony Annucci as testifying before a State Senate hearing in February.

Of the nearly 32,000 people in state prisons as of the start of October, 7,550, or about 24 percent, were 50 or older, according to the DOCCS. 

The department does not comment on proposed legislation, as a matter of policy. A DOCCS spokesman, though, said department officials “find it necessary to remind the writers of this report, who are representing a place of higher learning, that prior to arriving to a DOCCS correctional facility, an individual has already committed a crime, been arrested by a law enforcement agency, charged by a district attorney and found guilty of a felony in a court of law while represented by counsel.”

That person is then sentenced by a judge according to state statute, the spokesman, Thomas Mailey, said. “DOCCS does not sentence individuals.”

In the last 10 years, about one person in three who died in jail had done at least 15 years behind bars, significantly more than the 1-in-29 ratio during the 1980s, according to the report. 

Among the report’s proposed solutions were passage of the so-called “Elder Parole” bill, which would oblige the state’s Parole Board to hold hearings for inmates 55 and older who have served at least 15 years of their sentence.

'It’s About Vengeance'

CUNY School of Law Professor Steve Zeidman, who has advocated for the bill’s passage, said there appeared to be significant misconceptions among its detractors about the legislation.  

“The law doesn’t say you immediately get out. It gives you the opportunity to go before the board” and to demonstrate atonement, growth and change, most often after doing decades behind bars, he said. “It’s an opportunity, that’s all it is.” 

Professor Zeidman, who is also director of the school’s Criminal Defense Clinic, said the threat to public safety from older people who committed egregious offenses years ago was negligible. “The odds of that person committing a violent crime is less than 1 percent,” he said of someone who might have killed as a teenager during a robbery decades ago. “People age out of violent crime.” 

Although the state's District Attorneys Association has not yet taken a position on this legislation, DAs are apprehensive about its impact on public safety, the Association's president, Anthony Jordan, said in an email.

"Prosecutors do have concerns about the number of dangerous people that would qualify for immediate consideration of release and the resources that are available in all counties for the successful reentry and reintegration of those who were formerly incarcerated," said Mr. Jordan, the Washington County DA.

'Compel Bd. to Do Duty'

Professor Zeidman also advocates for passage of companion legislation, the “Fair and Timely Parole” bill, whose stipulations would require the release of people who have completed their minimum sentence unless they are considered a “current and unreasonable risk or such risk cannot be mitigated by parole supervision.”

That legislation, Professor Zeidman said, “would compel the Parole Board to do what they are supposed to do,” which is to consider the person before them, rather than, say, political pressure that could color their judgment.

A recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law called the state's sentencing laws "excessively punitive and hopelessly convoluted."

Mr. Zeidman added that the state's "truth in sentencing" statutes oblige those convicted of crimes to do the minimum time before they become eligible for parole. He suggested those laws, as well as people's sentiments and judge's rationales when sentencing, were based not on justice but on other factors.

"To me, it’s just about vengeance, eternal punishment," he said. "How do we get more people to recognize clemency and redemption?"