Sam Dingman: For aging and ill inmates incarcerated in New York, living out their later years in state custody can be daunting. State law contains provisions to grant them early release under certain circumstances, but meeting the standard is a tall order. Gabe Levin is a reporter at the Times Union and looked at how the story of one inmate illustrates the broader question of how to deal with this population of prisoners. Gabe, Good afternoon.
Gabe Levin: Thank you for having me.
Sam Dingman: Thanks for being here. The inmate that you profiled is named Darrell Bossett. Can you introduce us to him?
Gabe Levin: Sure. Darrell is 70 years old. He takes no fewer than 19 different medications. He suffers from several potentially fatal diseases, among them stage four chronic kidney disease, chronic heart failure, and he's also hooked on oxygen. He uses a wheelchair and walker to get around the medical unit of the Mohawk Correctional Facility. He's been incarcerated there, and he's serving 61 years to life. He spent the last 44 years in prison for the 1980 murder of a Queens police officer, and the earlier murder of a man who was killed in retaliation for another shooting incident.
Sam Dingman: OK. So he's 44 years into his sentence?
Gabe Levin: Correct.
Sam Dingman: And he feels that he should be eligible for medical parole.
Gabe Levin: Right, he's unsuccessfully asked to be considered for it a few times now. So, what medical parole is: it's a pathway to release for prisoners with physical or mental conditions so impairing that the state ends up determining there is a quote-unquote reasonable probability they won't be a danger to the community. But that's actually a high bar to prove in many cases, as you pointed out earlier. It's a long, drawn out, or it can be a long, drawn out, multi-stage process, and that includes a physician's report. Also, one stage where there has to be approval from the commissioner of the state department of corrections and community supervision. So, advocates say basically only a minority of those who request to be considered for medical release actually end up in front of the parole board, and then at that point, the majority of people who end up at that stage do end up getting released. Specifically, to give you some numbers and put this into context, the Vera Institute of Justice had a report, and it said in it that prisoners filed almost 480 requests for medical parole between 2013 and 2017, and only 160 of those ended up before the parole board.
Sam Dingman: Wow. So why is the state saying that Darrell does not qualify for medical parole?
Gabe Levin: So Darrell doesn't qualify according to the state because he can still do basic day-to-day tasks and move around despite relying on that wheelchair and walker. So Darrell and his legal team, at Prisoners Legal Services of New York, they're basically arguing that this appears to be a narrower, more restrictive interpretation than what's explicitly laid out in state law, so there's kind of a dispute there between the advocates and how this is actually getting handled at a state level. But you know, at any rate, medical parole is really likely Darrell's only shot at release. He's not going to be eligible for parole until 2041.
Sam Dingman: That would be non-medical parole.
Gabe Levin: Right. And again, he has serious health complications. So I think his legal team fears that he might not ever end up getting to that point.
Sam Dingman: And if I'm not mistaken, there was a pretty memorable quote from a member of Darrell's legal team in your piece about the state's logic in thinking through what somebody who has severe physical restrictions like Darrell might still, in theory, be able to do if they were to be released from prison? Do you know the comment I'm talking about?
Gabe Levin: Yeah. So what he said, this is an attorney at Prisoners Legal Services of New York, what he said is basically it's a high bar because somebody could be laid out, you know, flat out in a bed and still direct somebody else to commit a crime. So determining who's a danger, just based on disability or the nature of their condition, that could be a hard task, and it is a sort of person-to-person, assessment.
Sam Dingman: So, Gabe, you were mentioning that advocates say that the bar is just extremely high for inmates who are seeking medical parole, and you quoted those numbers from the Vera Institute about how few of the inmates who seek medical parole are actually granted it. Darrell's case is part of a broader issue. What else are advocates saying about why they feel it should not be so difficult to get medical parole?
Gabe Levin: Well, Darrell's case and cases of others in his position, it really strikes at the heart of this debate over whether the pool of sick and elderly inmates who get considered for release should be broadened. I think that's the position of advocates. They say the system's too restrictive and it frequently turns away seriously ill and elderly prisoners before they can get to the parole board. And you know, dozens of people each year die of natural causes while incarcerated. So there's a sense from the advocates that that's too high of a number, and that many of those people potentially might have been dealing with a long-term ailment that that could have put them up for consideration through this process. You know, then there's kind of the other side of the coin: people who are questioning those efforts to broaden the parole system in the state. One Republican state lawmaker who I talked to, his name's state Sen. Anthony Palumbo. He's the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. He basically said these issues really need to be handled on a case by case basis, but he has worries, especially about releasing people who've committed the most serious, violent crimes.
Sam Dingman: This was a very interesting part of your piece, I thought. Tell us a little bit more about that. Part of what he's arguing is that he's concerned about the impact on victims' families if they find out that somebody who perpetrated harm against one of their family members has been let out of prison before the end of their sentence.
Gabe Levin: Yeah, he told me he talked to a lot of families of victims of violent crimes, and he said when somebody is a is a murder victim or a victim of sexual assault-that their relatives and those around them and those who are impacted don't forget about that sort of thing. That was his position. To be sure, there are some guardrails in place, right? Basically, certain violent offenders must serve at least half of their sentence before they can be considered for medical release, and again, it is a multi-stage process.
Sam Dingman: So, do you have any sense, Gabe, from your reporting that there's change on the horizon here?
Gabe Levin: Well, the medical parole system has been around in New York State for decades now, but there is potentially another avenue for elderly prisoners like Darrell to get in front of a parole board, that is if a proposed elder parole bill ends up as law. Basically, it's a contentious bill in the state senate right now. It would allow inmates ages 55 and older who have served at least 15 years to get a hearing, including those convicted of violent crimes. So there's a lot of debate over that right now, and whether that'll ever happen, or a law like that ends up getting passed, that remains to be seen.
Sam Dingman: What do you see as the next phase in your reporting on this?
Gabe Levin: I think the Times Union and other local media outlets should all follow developments with the elder parole bill, but also other bills and proposals like it, and I think the medical parole system in particular is something that really gets overlooked a lot in the coverage. So that’s something I'm going to be keeping a lookout on in the future, and certainly if any new cases that really speak to the system and some of the difficulties for prisoners facing it come up in the docket. That's something we're going to be following.
Sam Dingman: Gabe Levin is a reporter at the Albany Times Union. Gabe, thank you.
Gabe Levin: Thank you.
