Legal Aid calls on Hochul to act on clemency promise
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The Legal Aid Society is calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to act on a number of clemency reform promises she made last December. File photo by Darren McGee/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul
By Jacob Kaye
The city’s top public defense firm is calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to make good on a series of clemency reforms she promised a year ago.
The call from the Legal Aid Society comes about a week before the governor’s office typically grants sentence commutations and pardons – the two forms of clemency.
Last year, Hochul granted nine pardons and one sentence commutation on Christmas Eve. While making the clemency announcement, she also committed to making a series of reforms to the clemency process, which is often opaque and infrequent.
As the Eagle has reported throughout the year, those reforms have been slow to come. While Hochul’s office has quietly begun to act on several of them, other reforms, including granting clemency on a rolling basis throughout the year, have yet to be implemented.
“These New Yorkers, disproportionately people of color, are deserving of a second chance, and Governor Hochul should use her clemency powers to afford relief to the many people who are serving harsh sentences or who are living with the draconian consequences of past convictions,” said Ted Hausman, the supervising attorney with the Criminal Appeals Bureau at The Legal Aid Society.
“We hope that Governor Hochul departs from her predecessor’s practice, which afforded relief to such a small number of New Yorkers,” Hausman added. “She can and must use her broad commutation and pardon powers to reunite families and to keep families from being torn apart.”
It’s estimated that hundreds of New Yorkers currently have clemency applications pending with the governor’s office, some of which have been on the governor’s desk for years.
The governor has said that she agrees with advocates who have for years criticized the clemency process as being difficult to navigate and, in some ways, unjust.
When asked by the Eagle about updates to the reforms over the summer, Hochul said revamping the power given only to the governor was a “challenging process” that would take time.
“It is not an overnight process, but it's one that's going to be thoughtful and one that'll be long-term and enduring,” she said.
As Christmas – the day the governor typically grants clemency – approaches, it seems unlikely that Hochul will fulfill her promise to grant clemency throughout the year on a rolling basis, the reform advocates have said is at the top of their wishlist.
Though she has yet to publicly announce them, some of the other reforms, however, have begun to take shape.
Included among the reforms is a new advisory board dedicated to reviewing applications and making clemency recommendations to the governor – those duties are currently carried out by a group of executive office staffers. Hochul also said her office would begin informing those with pending applications about the status of their bid for clemency and would also provide detailed guidance on how to submit a clemency application.
The Eagle was the first to report in November that the advisory panel had begun to meet – its first meeting was in October and it’s currently in the process of scheduling regular meetings.
The governor’s office has also made two recent hires to fill two new positions – the director and deputy director of Clemency Programs, both of which will be dedicated full-time to assisting the governor’s office clemency program.
The governor’s office also recently rolled out a new webpage that gives more detailed instructions on the clemency application process to people looking to apply.
In addition to the templates, the panels and the new hires, the governor’s Executive Clemency Bureau has also begun sending out letters twice a year to people with pending applications. The letters detail the status of the applicant’s request and include information about how one can submit supplemental information related to their bid for clemency.
