Hochul follows through on key clemency reform
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Governor Kathy Hochul granted clemency to seven New Yorkers last week, marking the first time she’s granted clemency outside of the holiday season. File photo via the governor’s office
By Jacob Kaye
During her first Christmas as governor of New York, Kathy Hochul made a promise – her office’s process for granting clemency was going to get an overhaul.
Over the past year and a half, the reforms have been slow to come, and have been rolled out at a pace that has upset a number of advocates, who say incarcerated New Yorkers awaiting word on their clemency applications have little time to spare.
But as many of the reforms have been rolled out over the past year and a half, one has remained elusive. That is, however, until last week, when Hochul followed through on a change that advocates said was the cornerstone of reforming how clemency works in New York State.
On Friday, April 7, Hochul granted clemency to seven New Yorkers, marking the first time she’s followed through on her promise to grant clemency on a rolling basis.
"As governor of New York, it is my responsibility to exercise the power of clemency to show that change and redemption are possible," Hochul said in a statement.
"I am proud that we have dedicated the resources necessary to begin to grant clemency on a rolling basis, and I am committed to continuing our efforts to reform the process to best serve New Yorkers,” she added.
Though she had previously begun forming a Clemency Advisory Panel to assist her office in parsing through clemency applications and sending out letters to incarcerated New Yorkers on the status of their clemency applications, before last week, Hochul had yet to grant a clemency outside of the winter holiday season, the period of time governor’s throughout the country typically grant clemency.
Clemency, which can take form as either a pardon or a sentence commutation, is a power granted only to the governor. It’s estimated that several hundred New Yorkers apply for clemency each year, most of them wishing to have their sentences commuted. As of December, there were over 1,200 clemency applications awaiting the governor’s review.
Granting clemency on a rolling basis was at the heart of advocates’ calls to reforming clemency in New York. Granting clemency only once a year during the holiday season creates a perception that clemency is an act of mercy, and muddles the efforts made by incarcerated individuals to improve their lives while serving their prison sentence, advocates said.
But more importantly, advocates say that a large number of those applying for clemency are serving decades-long sentences, and are now elderly and facing the prospect of dying in prison. Granting only a handful of sentence commutations once a year doesn’t match the number of people advocates say are deserving of release.
Steve Zeidman, the director of CUNY Law School’s Criminal Defense Clinic, expressed concern to the Eagle multiple times last year when it appeared that clemency would only be granted around Christmas time. Last week, he said that he was glad to see Hochul make progress on the key reform.
“It's a first step, and I applaud her for that,” Zeidman said. “It sends a signal to everybody inside that it's not just once a year, and I think that's an important message.”
“All the people who weren't among those who received that good news today are going to be crushed, but on the other hand, I believe people are going to take notice that this is April and then maybe this will be ongoing,” he added. “That is my hope that in the months ahead – there are going to be more and more people granted clemency, because heaven knows, there are thousands of people who more than deserve it.”
Zeidman leads a team of students at the Queens law school who represent incarcerated New Yorkers seeking clemency. They are among one of the only groups of attorneys practicing clemency work in New York and have accounted for a vast majority of the sentence commutation applications granted in the past decade.
One of the two men to have had their sentences commuted by Hochul last week is Zeidman’s client.
Bryon Russ, who was granted clemency last week, was convicted on several robbery, burglary and criminal possession of a weapon charges in 2001, when he was 24 years old. He was sentenced to over four decades of prison and wasn’t scheduled to appear before the parole board until 2034. The sentence was larger than what most New Yorkers receive for committing homicide.
During the 23 years he was incarcerated, he began working toward his bachelor’s degree and worked as a teacher’s assistant, helping other incarcerated individuals work toward their GED.
He got familiar with the law, and became certified as a paralegal in 2022. Russ has also worked as a counselor and has facilitated anti-violence programs. He and his wife also launched an annual school supply drive for New York children in need, which has collected and donated over 200 hundred backpacks in the years it’s been up and running.
“He's done everything one could do to make amends, to repair, to transform – I mean everything,” Zeidman said.
Russ’ sentence and his time in prison are a perfect example of why clemency is needed, Zeidman said.
“His sentence is unjustifiable,” Zeidman said. “People are being over-punished.”
“Brian is not alone,” he added. “In fact, even on homicide cases, there are people serving 25-, 50- 75-years-to-life, life without parole, when no other civilized country doles out these kinds of sentences.”
Also granted a sentence commutation last week was Joaquin Winfield, who is now 58 years old and has spent the past 26 years serving a 37 and a half years to life in prison sentence for a series of non-violence drug charges.
Winfield was sentenced under the now-repealed Rockefeller Drug Laws, which set mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life for drug users and sellers.
As of 2023, Winfield is serving one of the longest sentences for a non-violent drug offense in all of New York.
Unlike Russ, Winfield will not be automatically released as a result of his clemency application being granted. Instead, he will be given the opportunity to appear before the parole board, an opportunity he otherwise would not have gotten until 2034.
The other five people whose applications for clemency were granted were all pardoned of charges they received decades ago and have long served their sentence for. Each of the five New Yorkers to receive pardons are immigrants with strong ties to the U.S., and whose past convictions threatened their ability to stay in the country – a bulk of the clemency applications Hochul has granted in the past two years have been to individuals in similar situations.
The two sentence commutations granted last week were recommended to the governor by the Clemency Advisory Panel, which was among the reforms and which began to form last November. The panel is designed to assist the governor with clemency applications, by reviewing them and recommending candidates to be granted clemency.
Advocates have expressed concern that the panel will work to shield the governor from any potential political consequences that come with granting clemency.
As part of the reforms, Hochul’s office also began sending out letters to applicants updating them on the status of their clemency bids. Prior to the implementation of the reform, incarcerated New Yorkers rarely, if ever, received updates on their status, and may have never even gotten confirmation that their application had been received.
The governor’s office also created a new page on its website that offers guidance to potential clemency applicants, outlining what should be included in a clemency application and ways to update it once it’s been submitted.
In December 2021, when Hochul first introduced the reforms, the governor said that with each round of granted clemencies, her office would release the number of applications they’d received that year and how many were granted or denied.
Those numbers were not released last week.
