Hochul’s clemency reforms stall, concerning advocates
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Governor Kathy Hochul’s promise to grant clemency on a rolling basis has largely fallen flat this year after she granted only one round of clemencies in the spring. File photo by Susan Watts/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul
By Jacob Kaye
Toward the end of last year, Greg Mingo was feeling hopeful that hundreds of aging men and women in prisons across New York, some of whom he had met during his four decades behind bars, would soon have a real shot at getting released.
Throughout 2023, Governor Kathy Hochul had used her power to grant clemency on three different occasions. It marked the first year she had followed through on her promise to grant clemencies on a rolling basis, a key reform she committed to shortly after first taking office.
But a year later, Mingo’s faith that clemency in New York has been reformed has begun to diminish.
Hochul has so far in 2024 granted clemencies once, commuting the sentences of two people and pardoning 11 others. And while the governor is expected to grant another round of clemencies around Christmas time, it appears likely that fewer people will have their applications for clemency granted this year than in 2023.
“It's disheartening,” said Mingo, who himself was granted clemency in 2021 after spending more than 40 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. “To those of us who fight for people to obtain clemency, it is really discouraging.”
The power to grant clemency rests solely in the hands of the governor. The constitutionally-defined power can either take the form of a sentence commutation, which is sought by New Yorkers who are currently incarcerated, or a pardon, which is sought by New Yorkers who have completed their sentence and are looking to clear their criminal record. Applications for sentence commutations make up well over half of the applications sent to the governor but often account for less than a quarter of the clemencies granted.
In 2024, Hochul received 433 clemency applications in total, according to the governor’s office. Of those, 322 were requests for sentence commutations and 111 were requests for pardons. The new applications joined the backlog of over 1,600 pending applications, 71 percent of which are applications for sentence commutations.
Hochul has granted 13 clemency applications this year and 72 total since taking office.
The governor’s office did not respond to the Eagle’s request for comment for this story.
New York governors rarely granted clemency at all until 2015, when former Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a program to provide pro bono legal services to New Yorkers seeking sentence commutations. Though those reforms ultimately failed to materialize in full, clemency became a possible avenue for release for a small handful of incarcerated men and women serving long sentences who were able to show that they had changed their lives for the better while behind bars.
Shortly after Hochul assumed the governor’s office in 2021 following Cuomo’s resignation over sexual harassment allegations, she vowed to further reform clemency in New York in an effort to “increase transparency and improve the review process” and to “grant clemency on an ongoing basis throughout the year, rather than granting clemency only once.”
Over the next several years, Hochul began to implement the reforms, including an effort to update incarcerated New Yorkers on the status of their clemency applications. She also created a clemency advisory panel designed to review and recommend applicants to the governor.
But the reform that advocates had fought hardest for wasn’t put in place until last year, when Hochul for the first time granted clemency outside of the holiday season. The governor granted two commutations and five pardons in April, three commutations and 10 pardons in September and four commutations and 12 pardons in December. In all, the governor commuted the sentences of nine people and pardoned 27 others, more than the total number of clemencies she granted during her first two years in office combined.
When Hochul again announced a round of pardons and commutations in May of this year, advocates and applicants hoped she’d follow a schedule similar to the one she followed the year prior – some even hoped she’d increase the number of times she’d grant clemency.
But seven months later, the May clemencies remain the only ones Hochul has granted in 2024.
“It’s very concerning,” said Steve Zeidman, the director of CUNY Law School’s Criminal Defense Clinic.
“I know a lot of people inside who I work with, they want to know, is this the governor backtracking?” Zeidman added. “I certainly hope not.”
Zeidman, a small staff and a rotating group of law students have been at the forefront of reforming clemency in New York. Since 2015, Zeidman has represented a majority of the men and women granted clemency in New York.
The CUNY Defense Clinic receives hundreds of letters each year from incarcerated individuals seeking their help. But despite the dropoff in the number of clemencies granted by Hochul in 2024, Zeidman said the letters have continued.
The law professor said that a large number of people reached out to him earlier this week after New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy granted clemency to 36 people.
“People were saying, ‘Look at that, even in New Jersey. What's happening in New York? What about us? Is this a good sign? Is this a bad sign?’” Zeidman said.
The feeling of hopefulness followed by disappointment is not new for a number of currently and formerly incarcerated New Yorkers awaiting the governor’s decision on their clemency applications.
Mingo, who was originally sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for a double murder committed in Queens in 1980, saw a number of people he had grown close with in prison have their applications for clemency approved before he too was ultimately released.
The former Queens man, who has maintained his innocence since the day he was arrested in 1981, had started to hope that he would be granted clemency by Cuomo in 2021. With only a few weeks left in office, the former governor commuted the sentences of five people. Mingo was not among them.
“I went to work and I was told, ‘Oh, sorry, the governor granted clemencies, and you weren't one of them,’” Mingo told the Eagle. “I said, ‘Well, I'm happy for the other people.’”
Greg Mingo, who served over four decades in prison before being granted clemency by former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2021. Photo via Second Look Project
But 10 days later, on Cuomo’s last day in office, he commuted the sentences of five more people. This time, Mingo was on the list.
“You never want to give up hope,” Mingo said. “Because that's all you have to cling to.”
According to Mingo and others who have been granted clemency in recent years, the promise of a possible sentence commutation was enough to encourage a number of incarcerated people to not only apply for clemency but to participate in programming, attend college and generally stay out of trouble while in prison.
But as the number of granted clemencies have slowed this year, Mingo said he fears the positive effects of the reforms may soon disappear.
“They get disheartened and discouraged, sitting behind, waiting, waiting, hoping,” he said. “And it's not just the people inside – it's the families, it's the wives, the sisters, the daughters, the children that are affected by it.”
Though he largely doesn’t believe Hochul’s reforms to the clemency process have worked, Mingo said the governor could make up for a slow year for sentence commutations by granting a large number of clemencies before the end of 2024.
“I think that would kind of erase the failure of the entire year,” Mingo said. “At the end of the day, it’s all about them coming home.”
