CT to resume hearing inmate commutation requests
NEW HAVEN — The state Board of Pardons and Parole for more than two years effectively ceased hearing inmates’ requests to have their sentences commuted, in part due to what an official said is an ongoing review of its application processes.
While the process now is expected to get rebooted this summer with changes in eligibility and the application process, the delay meant inmates did not have an opportunity to be heard, defense attorney Alex Taubes said.
Board Executive Director Richard Sparaco said that the panel suspended its acceptance of commutation applications in 2020 while it reviewed policies and procedures. The board had reviewed only one application in 2019, records show.
According to state data, after accepting 37, 85 and 101 commutation applications in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively — five of which were granted — the board accepted one in 2019, none in 2020 and none so far this year.
Taubes contends that meant people in prison were inappropriately being denied the chance to even lobby the board.
“The board has the power under the law, under its discretion, to commute everyone’s sentence,” said Taubes. “Not only do they not use that power, they don’t even have a process to submit applications.”
Without the outlet of the board, Taubes said those in prison needed the approval of prosecutors to seek a sentence reduction or to get a judge to approve a motion for compassionate release.
But those are high bars, he said — prosecutors are not always inclined to support sentence reductions, and, in Connecticut, a person needs to be “physically or mentally debilitated, incapacitated or infirm as to be physically incapable of presenting a danger to society,” as described by the board, to be granted compassionate release.
Taubes said he had worked with clients who had been in prison for decades without disciplinary issues. They and others “deserve a second chance, deserve a second look at their lives,” he said.
“They’re not being heard,” said Taubes. “They have nowhere to go.”
A review
Sparaco said in an email that the board had “temporarily interrupted the acceptance of applications for commutations while we focused on the creation and implementation of a completely automated web based application processing system for Absolute Pardons and Certificates of Employability,” which began in early 2020.
Then, during the pandemic, “the Board had to refocus its entire operation and shift to a virtual environment,” which caused further delay, he said.
“We did this without interrupting the parole and pardons hearings process. However, during this time we had to completely place our commutation review on hold as we focused on our other statutory releases.
Over the past months, we began to shift focus back to the commutation process,” said Sparaco.
“Our review has resulted in the broadening of the eligibility criteria for commutations and (the) creation (of ) a new application process,” Sparaco said. “As we near the end of our review, we are looking forward to once again accepting applications with a current anticipated date of July 1, 2021.”
Sparaco declined to discuss immediately the details of how the eligibility criteria had been changed, saying that it was still in draft form. The changes should be finalized within the month, he said.
The board reviewed 1,426 parole applications and 1,396 pardon applications in total in 2020, according to state statistics, down slightly from 1,703 and 1,592, respectively, in 2019.
The board also considers whether to pardon people, which erases a criminal record or affirms job eligibility; commutations are issued to people serving ongoing sentences.
Over that two-year period, the board granted 1,585 pardons – 593 in 2019, 992 in 2020 – and released 1,709 people on parole, 848 in 2019 and 861 in 2020, state data shows.
As of Friday, the board’s website noted it is “in the process of revising the application and policy” governing commutations.
Taubes said he thinks the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration had not made it a priority. Taubes said that governors in other states have the power to grant commutations
Max Reiss, a spokesman for the Lamont administration, noted the governor does not have the power to grant commutations or intervene in individual cases. The governor supports the board resuming hearing commutation applications later this year, he said.
Guidelines
Mike Lawlor, associate professor of criminal justice at the
University of New Haven and former state lawmaker and prosecutor, said the standard for granting commutations had been unclear to date. Taubes noted this as well, saying it was the important for the board to establish clear guidelines.
Under the state constitution, the victims of the crime in question have to have input, but beyond that, it’s a judgment call by the board, Lawlor said.
The primary population that could garner a commutation, he said is are those who committed isolated violent crimes while young, then were sentenced to decades or life in prison without parole.
He raised the examples of Penny Krom, a Danbury woman who was granted clemency in 2016 after drowning her newborn child, and Clyde Meikle, who had his sentence reduced by a judge after killing his cousin in 1994. Both had been model prisoners, he said.
“It’s just a question of: do all these people need to be locked up forever?” Lawlor said.
Lawlor said he believed commutations would become more common in the future, as the board, and society in general, revisits some of the harsh sentences of the 1990s.
Decades prior, Lawlor said, people convicted of murder had been eligible for parole, before standards for punishment became more aggressive.
“The whole idea of commutation of sentence ... is something that only happened very occasionally in the past, but in recent years, there’s been more of a focus on that,” said Lawlor. “I think you’re going to see more of these in the future.”
Taubes described the plan to resume accepting applications as “extremely good news,” saying it was “better late than never.”
He said he hoped the board would make applications available before July 1, so those who would like to seek a commutation can work on their filings before the process formally resumes.