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"He's behaving like Ebenezer Scrooge," said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York State. "We expected mercy and a big heart from him, with so many prisoners awaiting clemency. It's very disappointing."

A total of 333 of the 63,500 inmates in the state prison system met the requirements this year to apply for executive clemency, also known as a commutation of sentence. That power was granted to the governor in the state constitution of 1777.

Spitzer did grant a pardon last week, to Frederick Lake, a Jamaican immigrant who spent six years in prison for robbery. Lake has lived in Brooklyn with his wife and sons since 1997, and Spitzer's pardon spared Lake from deportation.

By comparison, the three previous governors, each of whom served multiple terms, used the clemency power freely: Pataki, 32 times; Cuomo, 37 times; and Carey, 155 times.

Spitzer does not have a formal policy on the practice, said Jennifer Givner, a spokeswoman. "We carefully review clemency and pardon requests on a case-by-case basis," she said.

Anthony Papa is disappointed by Spitzer's dearth of clemencies and pardons. He was granted clemency on Dec. 23, 1996, by Pataki, who was cast as a law-and-order Republican after winning election with a call to reinstate the death penalty.

Papa, who's now a prisoner advocate, said the conventional wisdom was that Spitzer, a Democrat, would be a kinder, gentler governor on matters of crime and punishment.

"It totally floored me that Spitzer didn't show some compassion and give clemencies," said Papa, who served 12 years of his 15-to-life sentence for a drug conviction.

"Spitzer could be countering his downward spiral in the polls by showing some mercy with clemencies. Instead, he's playing it safe politically," said Papa, author of a memoir, "15 to Life." He's a communications specialist for the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group headquartered in New York that is working to repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

The director of Prison Families of New York, based in Albany was also disappointed.

"The governor knows there are many cases that were overly sentenced and this is his opportunity to make a political statement," said Alison Coleman.

Exercising the power of executive clemency carries a political risk, especially for those with presidential aspirations, as Cuomo and governors of other states discovered.

"The use of the pardoning power of a governor of a state is constantly subject to severe criticism from many sources," Edward G. Griffin, counsel to Gov. Al Smith, wrote in 1928.

When Smith ran for president that year, he was attacked for his record number of clemencies in 1924: 92 pardons and 79 commutations of sentences.

Gangi said Spitzer's approach is particularly vexing to prison advocates who applauded his campaign platform of repealing the Rockefeller Drug Laws and reforming Pataki's harsh stance on parole.

"We applaud the governor for appointing progressive people to key criminal justice positions in his administration," Gangi said. "But that has not yet translated into his taking progressive positions, and I hope this doesn't signal that he's taking a hard-line stance on criminal justice issues."

There are other avenues for inmates; Cheri O'Donoghue tried several ways on behalf of her son, Ashley, 24, who was denied clemency by Spitzer after serving four years of a 7-to-21-year sentence on a cocaine sale conviction while he was a student at Hamilton College.

"It's a shame because I expected a whole lot more out of Governor Spitzer based on his inaugural speech about Day One," said O'Donoghue, of Manhattan, who volunteers as a prisoner advocate.

Her son applied and was accepted for a work-release program. He'll be transferred in February to a Manhattan facility that allows furloughs and other privileges as a reward for good behavior.

"Luckily, we didn't pin all our hopes on Governor Spitzer because he's not the savior that prison families expected after all those years of Pataki," she said. Grondahl can be reached at 454-5623 or by e-mail at pgrondahl@timesunion.com.

New York Daily News
The Daily Politics
Spitzer = Scrooge? (Updated)
By Elizabeth Benjamin
December 28, 2007

Drug law reform activists are furious at Gov. Eliot Spitzer for declining to grant any clemencies during his first year in office, saying that flies in the face of a promise his made during the 2006 campaign to “continue to support efforts to reform these laws.”

“This is a cold-heart, hard-line approach to sentencing issues that we hope does not reflect whatever posture he ultimately takes on the drug laws,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, an organization chartered by the Legislature to monitor conditions in the state’s prisons and issue reports on prison-related issues.

Gangi compared Spitzer to Ebenezer Scrooge before he’s visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley.”

That position that is shared by the George Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance, which issued a press release yesterday that included quotes from Anthony Papa, a drug-offender-turned-activist who was granted clemency by former Gov. George Pataki in 1996.

“I know first-hand how meaningful a holiday clemency can be,” Papa said. “For the last ten years, I’ve been a productive member of society instead of being locked in a cage for a first-time, nonviolent offense, costing taxpayers nearly half a million dollars. The governor, with one stroke of his pen, can allow others to have the same opportunity that I had.”

Spitzer did grant a single pardon this year to Frederick Lake, a Brooklyn man who faced deportation back to his native Jamaica due to his criminal record. The governor stressed that he had acted in this case in the interest of preventing Lake from being forced to return home - not because he believed Lake’s claim of innocence, thereby injecting himself into an immigration debate (which didn’t work so well the last time).

Unlike a pardon, which erases a conviction from the records, a clemency merely reduces an offender’s sentence. The Parole Board must sign off on clemencies, but historically it has rarely opposed a governor’s wishes.

According to Spitzer spokeman Errol Cockfield, who confirmed the governor does not intend to grant any clemencies this year, the Spitzer administration received some 333 clemency requests as of Nov. 1, 2007.

NOTE: That number is updated with information from the state Division of Parole, which is the entry point for these applications.

“We review each clemency application carefully and come to a decision on a case by case basis,” Cockfield said, noting that applicants must meet basic criteria such as having served a minimum of one year in prison and not already being eligible for parole.

Drug law advocates were particularly concerned about Spitzer’s failure to issue any clemencies because it comes on the heels of a preliminary report from his Commission on Sentencing Reform that included no drug law reform recommendations.

The governor could have “sent a message” by granting clememcy to one or more offenders serving time under the drug laws, Gangi said, but his decision not to, coupled with his virtual silence on the topic in general and the commission’s decision to bypass it, does not bode well for this issue in the future.

UPDATE2: The administration also helpfully provided some stats on clemencies past, which appear after the jump.

1990 1 1991 2 1992 2 1993 2 1994 4 1995 2 1996 7 1997 4 1998 0 1999 5 2000 5 2001 3 2002 4 2003 1 2004 0 2005 1 2006 0

The above are all commutation of sentence

2003 1 posthumous pardon (use of foul language in a public forum, given to comedian Lenny Bruce by former Gov. George Pataki).

The New York Times
A Lone Pardon This Year
By Anthony Papa
December 29, 2007

To the Editor:

Re “Spitzer Pardons Ex-Convict to Spare Him Deportation” (news article, Dec. 22):

Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s attempt to show compassion this holiday season fell way off the mark. Mr. Spitzer’s single pardon to an individual set free 10 years ago, coupled with the fact that he did not grant one clemency, was nothing more than a safe political move.

There are many nonviolent Rockefeller drug law offenders who have already served lengthy sentences but are stuck in prison because of a continuing political quagmire. Traditionally, these offenders have been granted clemency at Christmastime.

Former Gov. George Pataki, who was known for his toughness on crime, granted clemencies to 28 of them, including me. To give none of those offenders who applied for clemency a chance to be united with their families is a crying shame.

Anthony Papa
New York, Dec. 24, 2007
The writer is a communications specialist at the Drug Policy Alliance.