State says shock incarceration saves a billion dollars
State puts millions into Elmira prison
5 corrections officers hurt in prison fracas
Inmate found guilty in assault on officer
Female prison worker attacked
Inmate wasn't shackled, state says
Attica families, state settle
Counselor had alarm in purse, union says
Dial ‘M’ for maximum-security prison escape
Prison counselor in intensive care, police say
Union, state to discuss prison
Sing Sing Prison Could Become NY Tourist Draw
Southport correction officer welcomed back from Afghanistan
Silver questions death penalty
The Last Executioner
The Attica prison `sale' continues to haunt Albany

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Associated Press

State prison officials say New York's "shock" incarceration program has saved taxpayers more than one billion dollars since it was introduced in the late 1980s.

The program that made its debut in 1987 allows felons to serve shorter, more intensive sentences.

Today, Department of Corrections officials announced that the total savings from the six-month programs run at four sites topped a billion dollars over the past 17 years.

The programs designed to build character and self esteem include military-style exercise, physical labor, academics and intensive substance abuse treatment.

Felons must be under 40 years old and convicted of a nonviolent offense to be considered for the shock program.

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By Bryce T. Hoffman

ELMIRA | A little more than a year after two murderers escaped, the state is pumping millions into the Elmira Correctional Facility to modernize the aging lock-up and bolster security.

Projects set for completion in the next year include a $4.7 million perimeter fence, a $6 million electrical upgrade and a $180,000 "hospitality center" where prison visitors can check in and freshen up.

Along with expanded space for parking, inmate processing and a new entrance building, the total investment will reach $16.4 million, said James B. Flateau, spokesman for the state Department of Correctional Services.

"These are all initiatives that not only make the prison more secure for the public, it also provides safeguards for employees," he said. "No matter how good security is, you can always find ways to improve it. That's what we're doing here."

The 128-year-old maximum security prison ran into a public relations nightmare last year when two convicted killers escaped in July. Timothy G. Morgan of Fulton County and Timothy A. Vail of Binghamton used tools to dig through the ceiling of their cell and then shimmied down bedsheets to the ground.

The fugitives eluded a manhunt for two-days until their peaceful capture in Horseheads.

Union representatives speaking on behalf of the prison's corrections officers were swift to blame the state for the escapes, citing what they called a bare-bones budget and inadequate staff levels to overlook the prison's more than 1,800 inmates.

The construction plans went forward shortly thereafter.

Grant Marin, western region vice president of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevol-ent Association, welcomed the upgrades but said they are politically motivated.

"This fencing system with the razor ribbon and motion detector system unequivocally would have helped prevent the escapes," he said. "We knew that was a serious weakness in the security and layout that had to be addressed. It only took them 25 years to finally do it."

State officials flatly deny that the multimillion-dollar infusion was rushed into place because of the escapes. Plans for construction were moving forward before then, Flateau said.

Marin said the prison needs about 40 more guards on top of the physical improvements to ensure security.

"You could have the best, most secure prison," Marin said. "Without the proper amount of staff, you will still leave the place vulnerable to escape."

Flateau said New York state already has a much higher ratio of guards to prisoners than any comparable state. The Elmira prison employs about 500 guards in a total staff of 688, Flateau said.

An investigation into the escapes revealed repeated instances of staff complacency - not inadequate staffing - contributed to the security breach, Flateau said.

"The night of the escape, every job that should have been staffed was staffed," he said.

At least one city official said Elmira is mostly in the dark about changes at the prison.

Elmira Councilman John J. Corsi, who represents the neighborhoods surrounding the facility in the Third District, said the state has given no advance warning about its plans for the landmark, located at Davis and Bancroft streets.

"I don't see any cooperation at all," he said. "As for the fence and all that, I didn't hear about construction of the fence until the day they actually started it."

Corsi has lived near the prison for 40 years and said there are few disturbances there. He figures the renovations will probably help preserve that peace, although some neighbors were worried about the aesthetics of the new fence.

"You hear pros and cons," he said. "Most people are pleased."

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STORMVILLE -- Five Green Haven Correctional Facility corrections officers were hurt Sunday when two inmates allegedly attacked them, the state Department of Corrections said.

An officer was frisking an inmate about 12:20 p.m. when the inmate allegedly turned and attacked the officer, spokesman Jim Flateau said.

When other officers rushed in to help, a second inmate got involved, allegedly taking an officers' baton and using it as a weapon.

About 10 officers subdued the inmates, who were not identified. They are being kept in disciplinary housing pending an investigation, Flateau said.

The officers' injuries included a concussion and head and face cuts. Three were taken to local hospitals, Flateau said. He declined to identify the officers.

Richard Harcrow, president of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, said the incident highlights the dangers of a corrections officer's job.

''This is the violent nature of prison work that our officers face on a daily basis,'' he said

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A prison inmate was convicted yesterday of assaulting a correction officer at the Sullivan Correctional Facility.

A jury found Rashid Garbutt, 20, guilty of assault on a correction officer, a felony that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

About 1 p.m. on Jan. 31, Garbutt attacked correction officer Dale Taggart. Garbutt punched, kicked and scratched Taggart, causing an infection so severe that Taggart required surgery to treat it.

Garbutt had been in prison about 3½ years at the time of the attack. He was in on a youthful-offender conviction, and the charge couldn't be learned.

His defense lawyer argued that he wasn't capable of forming the intent to attack the officer because of a long history of mental illness. Garbutt will be sentenced on Jan. 17 in Sullivan County Court.

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- Police question convicted sex criminal; state won't release counselor's condition.
By JEFF MURRAY
Star-Gazette
[email protected]

An inmate serving 25 to 50 years for attempted murder and rape assaulted a female counselor Monday morning at the Elmira Correctional Facility, and she was hospitalized after the attack, police and state correction officials said.

The injured counselor was transported to Elmira's Arnot Ogden Medical Center, but federal law prevents the state Department of Correctional Services from disclosing her identity, condition or injuries, department spokesman James Flateau said.

The inmate accused in the attack at the maximum-security state prison is Alton Hutchinson, who will be 40 Friday. He has been in the state prison system since 1993, according to Correctional Services.

Hutchinson was questioned by New York State Police from the Horseheads barracks and state prison investigators. Charges are pending, police said.

Hutchinson is serving a 1993 Erie County sentence for attempted second-degree murder, first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and second-degree assault.

According to state officials, Hutchinson was scheduled for a routine quarterly review Monday morning with the counselor in her office in the Shop 5 building.

At 9:20 a.m., the correction officer assigned to the area noted the office door was closed and the lights were off. The officer returned to the office when he learned from staff that the counselor was supposed to be in the office.

The officer entered the unlocked office and saw the counselor on the floor behind a desk with the inmate on top of her. When the officer pulled the inmate away, the suspect jumped up, broke free and ran from the Shop 5 building.

Hutchinson was taken into custody a few minutes later, 150 yards away on the second floor of the building housing mental health offices, the state said.

Correction officials are investigating whether a sexual assault occurred.

It is standard procedure for correction officers to remain outside the door while counselors meet with inmates, Flateau said.

He declined to comment on what security procedures are in place to protect civilian employees during inmate visits, or whether those procedures were followed.

Representatives of the unions that represent the counselor and the correction officers were unavailable for comment Monday.

While in prison, Hutchinson has been found guilty of nearly two dozen infractions, including illegal drug use, assaulting inmates, possessing weapons, refusing orders, possessing contraband and violent conduct, according to the state.

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Suspect in attack did not appear to be threat to counselor, spokesman says.
By SALLE E. RICHARDS
Star-Gazette
[email protected]

The Elmira Correctional Facility inmate accused of attacking a female counselor Monday was not considered a risk to staff and was therefore allowed to meet with her privately and without restraints, a state prison official said Wednesday.

A correction officer was assigned to monitor the area but not to attend the counseling session, said James B. Flateau, state Department of Correctional Services.

The officer, after noticing the counselor's door was closed and the lights were out, entered the office and found Alton Hutchinson, 35, on top of the counselor, Flateau said. Hutchinson is serving 25 to 50 years for attempted murder and rape.

Hutchinson fled and was captured a short time later. He has not been criminally charged in the case, but is facing prison disciplinary charges for allegedly attacking the woman and striking an employee in the Office of Mental Health unit, where he was restrained after the incident, Flateau said.

He was interrogated by state police and state prison investigators Monday and then moved to a special housing unit at Southport Correctional Facility. If found guilty of the charges, Hutchinson will face additional years in disciplinary housing, Flateau said.

The victim, whom police have not identified, remains in the intensive care unit at Arnot Ogden Medical Center, police said Wednesday. They have not released information on her injuries or her condition.

Flateau said an inmate's treatment in prison is based on his behavior.

"His (Hutchinson) prior inmate history toward staff did not indicate a need to shackle him," Flateau said. "Many inmates do not act in prison with the conduct that led to their incarceration."

Flateau said all counseling sessions are private between staff and inmates because "obviously, routinely scheduling a third party in these sessions would dilute their value."

He added that inmates considered dangerous to staff are usually in special housing and a counselor would conduct a session from the other side of the cell door.

In other developments, Chemung County District Attorney John Trice said crime scene evidence from the prison was transported to the state police laboratory Wednesday and he expects preliminary results within a few days.

One question to be answered before a decision is made on criminal charges is whether the female counselor was assaulted before the officer entered the office.

Trice is also waiting for state police investigators to interview the counselor.

New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association President Richard Harcrow said Wednesday the attack was a terrible event that again underscores the dangerous nature of working in a prison.

"There are too many people in the system and not enough people watching them," he said.

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Pataki expected to request first $2 million payment

Another chapter in the aftermath of the Attica uprising — the nation's deadliest prison riot — may be closed next week when Gov. George Pataki is expected to announce a $12 million settlement for families of state employees injured or killed during the 1971 firestorm.

Another chapter in the aftermath of the Attica uprising — the nation's deadliest prison riot — may be closed next week when Gov. George Pataki is expected to announce a $12 million settlement for families of state employees injured or killed during the 1971 firestorm.A total of 43 people died at the five-day uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in Wyoming County — a riot that for some activists became a rallying cry against brutality! and racism behind prison walls.But often forgotten in the years after the riot were the prison guards and other state employees who were taken hostage during the riot. Eleven state workers died — one at the hands of inmates when the riot erupted and 10 by gunfire when State Police stormed the prison during the retaking.In 2000, survivors of the riot and the families of slain state workers created a group called Forgotten Victims of Attica. The group has largely held state officials responsible for conditions that sparked the riot, and for the bloody retaking.An Albany source said Thursday that Pataki's budget, to be unveiled Tuesday, would include $2 million for members of the Forgotten Victims. There also will be plans, included in forthcoming legislation, to allot $2 million a year for five more consecutive budget cycles, the source said.Gary Horton, the Genesee County Public Defender who is spokesman for Forgotten Victims, confirmed the settlement.

"We are pleased tha! t the governor took the initiative to ensure that the money was in this year's budget cycle," Horton said.The Forgotten Victims of Attica sprang to life in 2000 after the state agreed to a $12 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit brought by inmates who were at Attica during the September 1971 riot and retaking. Of that settlement, $8 million was awarded to inmates and $4 million to their attorneys.The Forgotten Victims made several demands of the state: compensation, counseling for those wanting it, access to Attica-related records, a guarantee of an annual ceremony at the prison, and an apology from the state.According to the Albany source, three of the five demands will be answered by Pataki next week. There will be no additional funding for counseling, though anyone seeking it could use money from the compensation. As well, there will be assurances that prison grounds will be open for ceremonies on Sept. 13, the anniversary of the retaking.The Forgotten Victims and the stat! e will continue to negotiate over the issue of an apology and access to records that may now be sealed.

The $8 million inmate settlement was divided among more than 500 former inmates or their families. The settlement for the Forgotten Victims is expected to be split among 50 or more families.In 2000, U.S. District Judge Michael Telesca was chosen to decide how to divide the inmate settlement. According to the Albany source, an "administrator'' will be chosen to help determine the allotment of the $12 million settlement for the Forgotten Victims. That administrator would be chosen by the governor, legislative leaders, and the Forgotten Victims.

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- Correction officer praised for quick action, credited with saving woman's life.

By SALLE E. RICHARDS

Star-Gazette

The female counselor attacked Monday morning at the Elmira Correctional Facility was carrying a working personal alarm device in her purse, but was probably knocked unconscious before she could reach it, a representative of her union said Thursday.

James Carr, the regional coordinator for the Public Employees Federation, which represents civilian workers at the prison, credited the correction officer who interrupted the attack for his quick action and persistence in following up on a suspicion that something was wrong.

"In my opinion, he did an outstanding job," Carr said. "He probably saved her life."

The correction officer, who noticed the counselor's office was dark and the door closed Monday morning, entered the office and found Alton Hutchinson, 35, on top of the counselor, prison officials said. Hutchinson fled and was captured inside the prison a short time later, officials said.

Hutchinson, serving 25 to 50 years for attempted murder and rape, is now in special housing at the Southport Correctional Facility where he awaits charges.

The victim, whom police have not identified, remains hospitalized at Arnot Ogden Medical Center, police said. They have not released information on her injuries or her condition.

State Police Investigator Jeffrey Gotschall said Thursday he will present the case to Chemung County District Attorney John Trice when he receives a report from the state police crime lab in Albany on the evidence, including clothing, gathered at the scene.

He also has not yet interviewed the victim. Police have said they are unsure whether the victim was sexually assaulted.

Carr said the victim, who has worked at the correctional facility for about a year, was interviewing Hutchinson in an office that once was Carr's. He described the work area as having three offices and four classrooms.

Two female counselors were working in the area at the time of the attack, Carr said. They have several duties, which included overseeing transitional training classes for inmates and doing assigned caseload interviews, he said.

A correction officer is also assigned to the area, Carr said.

The victim's office has a steel door, usually left open, with a small window that is perhaps 2 feet by 2 feet, Carr said.

A state Department of Correctional Services spokesman said Wednesday that Hutchinson was not shackled at the time of the incident because he did not appear to be a threat to the prison staff.

Carr said he checked the victim's personal alarm device after the incident and it was working. The alarms are checked once a month, he said.

Sherry Halbrook, the union's interim public relations director, said the victim's purse was found on the floor with its contents, including the alarm device, scattered.

Carr said he is re-emphasizing to union members that they must recognize that all the inmates with whom they work are potentially dangerous and they should not give inmates an opportunity to threaten their safety.

Halbrook said the union wants the state to review existing policies and procedures as a result of the attack.

"It was an ugly incident," she said. "We have a good working relationship with the department of corrections, but more needs to be done."

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BY DON LEHMAN

FORT ANN -- Officials at Great Meadow Correctional Facility recently seized three cell phones that an inmate or inmates had smuggled into the maximum-security prison, devices officials said inmates apparently were hoping to use in an escape plot.

It was unclear this week how far the escape plan had advanced or how the prisoners planned to use the phones in the effort to break out.

The discovery led to a lockdown of at least a portion of the prison late last month as the facility’s staff searched for additional phones, officials said.

Inmates can't legally possess cell phones inside a jail or prison, and correction officers also are not allowed to bring them inside the walls for fear they would get into the hands of inmates.

James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department of Correctional Services, acknowledged the discovery but said he could not comment further on the case because it was still under investigation by the department’s Inspector General’s office.

Robert Hartung, chief sector steward for the union that represents correction officers at the prison, said the union was aware of the cell phone discoveries, and said they could have caused significant problems inside the prison.

Inmates’ communications via mail and telephone are monitored, a policy that was put into effect decades ago after an inmate arranged a murder from inside a state prison, he said.

So allowing them to secretly communicate could lead to trouble, he said, possibly allowing them to let friends or acquaintances outside the wall know transportation or inmate transfer schedules, Hartung said.

Hartung said he understood that at least one of the phones was smuggled into the prison inside a typewriter or word processor that an inmate was allowed to possess.

Phones could also cause trouble if the inmates who had them allowed others to use them and run up debts.

Because money is also banned inside the prisons, repayment of debts inside the walls can lead to violence.

Washington County First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Kortright, who prosecutes prison crime in the county, said prison officials had not approached his office about filing criminal charges in the case.

But he said inmates found to illegally have phones could face misdemeanor or felony charges of possessing contraband.

Felony charges can be brought when contraband is deemed dangerous.

“It (a cell phone) could be used to endanger someone inside the prison, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

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Inmate not charged yet after assault at Elmira Correctional Facility.

By SALLE E. RICHARDS

Star-Gazette

An Elmira Correctional Facility counselor remained hospitalized Tuesday in an intensive-care unit while state police continue to develop a case against the inmate accused of attacking her Monday.

No charges have been filed yet against Alton Hutchinson, 35, who is serving 25 to 50 years for attempted murder and rape. He was interrogated by state police and state prison investigators Monday and then moved to a special housing unit at Southport Correctional Facility.

The victim, whom police have not identified, was transported to Arnot Ogden Medical Center.

The assault on the counselor was discovered about 9:20 a.m. Monday when a correction officer assigned to the office area where the counselor worked noticed that the door to her office was closed and the lights were off although the counselor was scheduled to be there.

After entering the unlocked office, the officer saw the counselor on the floor behind a desk with an inmate on top of her. He pulled the inmate off the woman and the inmate ran away, according to a news release from state Department of Correctional Services.

The inmate was captured a few minutes later, the news release said.

State Police Investigator Jeffrey Gotschall said Tuesday that he had not yet interviewed the victim. He said he was unsure of the victim's condition because the hospital would not release the information, but he said she was being treated in the intensive-care unit at Arnot Ogden.

Gotschall said evidence from the scene, including clothing, was collected and sent to a state police crime lab. The examination of that evidence should reveal whether the counselor was sexually assaulted, Gotschall said.

Gotschall said the next step when the investigation is complete will be to present it to Chemung County District Attorney John Trice.

Trice said Tuesday he did not have details about the case, nor did he know how seriously the counselor was injured.

When he reviews the case with investigators, Trice said they will decide together what charges should be filed.

Trice said he expects to review the evidence by the end of the week or next week, depending on the lab results and the condition of the victim.

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WILTON -- Leaders of the state prison guards union will meet today with the state Department of Correctional Services in an effort to save the minimum security camp at Mount McGregor Correctional Facility and other state prisons slated for closure.

Gov. George Pataki's proposed state budget, announced Tuesday, did not include money to keep the 280-inmate facility open and it is scheduled to close 90 days after a new budget is passed. If the camp is closed, 74 uniformed guards and 10 other workers would lose their jobs.

The adjacent 588-bed medium-security prison is not slated to close.

The state has said its inmate population dropped by 8,000 since 1999. According to the state office of budget, the state is saving $6 million by closing the prison, which was to have closed last year before local lawmakers pressured Pataki's administration to reconsider.

Last fall, the state Department of Correctional Services said it had found $5 million in cost savings elsewhere in the state's prison system.

Paul Marin, a spokesman for the union, NYSCOBA, said he would know more after the meeting.

'This is all in its earliest stages,' he said.

Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward, R-Willsboro, said she'd heard last week that McGregor may have been back on the chopping block, but hoped it wouldn't be true. She met with people from the governor's office Tuesday.

'They told me that everything is on the table,' said Sayward, who represents parts of northern Saratoga County.

Assemblyman Roy McDonald, R-Wilton, said he warned that the fight to save McGregor may become an annual event, like the fights over funding for BOCES or the Community Highway Improvement Program.

'It's not unique in the way the state of New York operates -- unfortunately,' said McDonald, a former longtime Wilton supervisor.

Sayward, a member of the Assembly Corrections Committee, said the administration has told her Camp McGregor needs $3 million in capital improvements. She like to see the state make the improvements, then use the facility for drug treatment to give it a permanent niche in a new, downsized corrections department.

'Camp McGregor was used as a model for drug treatment programs around the state,' she said.

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One of America's most notorious prisons, Sing Sing, could do more than lock up dangerous criminals, local officials say.

The institution that saw the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as spies could become a lucrative tourist attraction, according to Westchester County, N.Y., officials.

Local officials are asking the state's help in funding the start-up of a museum in the prison's old power house, which would be connected by tunnel to an original cell block no longer in use, said Westchester County Planning Commissioner Jerry Mulligan on Monday.

Studies show a museum at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility could lure 150,000 visitors a year, he said, at a start-up cost of about $5 million.

"It's a little bit eerie, but it's just this fascination people have," said Mulligan.

The dark, imposing prison, which today holds about 1,745 inmates, overlooks the Hudson River in Ossining, N.Y., about 30 miles north of New York City.

The saying "up the river" refers to being shipped north to Sing Sing from New York. Inside, the massive stone walls and dim halls made Sing Sing a popular setting for prison movies, including "Angels with Dirty Faces" with James Cagney in 1938.

Bank robber Willie Sutton escaped from Sing Sing in 1932. Hundreds of inmates were executed in the electric chair "Old Sparky" there, including the Rosenbergs in 1953.

Inmates built the original cell block in 1825 and inmates today might be involved in the museum, Mulligan said. However, much of the prison population is held in maximum security.

"That could be an issue," Mulligan said.

Turning the prison into a tourist attraction would be a marked change from days when the town changed its name to Ossining from Sing Sing to distance itself from the prison, and local officials frowned on its public mention.

"It could be the Alcatraz of the east," Mulligan said, referring to the museum at the California prison, no longer in use. "This could trigger a whole wave of tourism."

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Column by JOHN P. CLEARY

"How big was your smile when you got off that plane in America," asked one of his co-workers.

Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Tim Paluch stuck his fingers in his mouth and pulled back his lips as wide as he could. Paluch has been in Afghanistan with the Horseheads-based Bravo Company of the 204th Engineer Battalion for about eight months. Now he's home for a few weeks of holiday leave.

His smile was at least that big again Wednesday afternoon. He went to the Southport Correctional Facility, where he works as a correction officer, to visit a few friends, but was surprised to find about 200 of his co-workers waiting to welcome him.

His co-workers were surprised, too. They'd been told to report to a gymnasium, but not told why.

The assembly gave Paluch a chance to thank his fellow correction officers and other staffers for the support they've shown his family since he's been stationed overseas.

Co-workers have donated about $6,000 to a program that helps the families of Paluch and two other correction officers, Tim Harris and Mark Thomas, while they are serving in the military, said Sgt. Frank Grover of the correctional facility.

In addition to sending him many care packages -- so many that Paluch shares them with other soldiers -- a committee from the correctional facility uses the money to give anniversary and birthday gifts, make emergency home or auto repairs or fill other needs for the families, Grover said.

They've given more than their time. Workers have mowed the lawn, trimmed the hedges, cleaned out the gutters and moved furniture at Paluch's home. They've tried to take care of the everyday things Paluch would have done if he were home, Grover said.

Paluch's wife, Kim Paluch, said correction officers even showed up to help close the family's pool for the winter.

"It's majorly overwhelming," Tim Paluch said of the program. "That's all I can say, it's majorly overwhelming."

When they spotted Paluch entering the gym, the workers jumped up from the bleachers with a roar. He told the assembly about the construction projects Bravo Company is working on in Afghanistan and answered some questions about his life there. He thanked them for their support and for the care packages.

After the short program, as they left the gym, the workers mobbed around the Paluchs, most getting in a handshake or a hug before returning to their posts. Paluch then went off to visit other workers who weren't free to attend the event.

"They're all like family," Kim Paluch said.

Correction Officer Courtney Bennett, Tim Paluch's friend and one of the few people in on Wednesday's surprise visit, echoed that sentiment.

"We are a family here; we take care of one another," Bennett said. "You don't find that at every place."

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ALBANY -- The state Legislature's top Democrat said Wednesday he had doubts about whether the state should have a death penalty, throwing into question whether lawmakers will reinstate it.

"I question whether we need a death penalty," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan. "I have some doubt whether it's worth it for us to have a death penalty."

Silver, who made his remarks in an interview with the editorial board of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle newspaper, has the power to block capital punishment, since the Assembly he controls would have to adopt any measure reinstituting the death penalty for it to become law.

Death-penalty prosecutions in the state have been suspended since last summer when New York's highest court declared the statute unconstitutional because of a technical flaw.

The court focused on the provision governing what happens when a jury can't reach a decision on sentencing -- the law mandated a life sentence with a chance for parole. That could coerce juries into ordering the death penalty rather than risk allowing the offender to return to the streets some day, the court reasoned.

Gov. George Pataki and leaders of the Republican-controlled Senate support a short rewrite that orders a life-without-parole sentence when a jury can't decide.

It's been unclear whether the Assembly would accept such a measure, and Silver hasn't committed himself either way. But one key death-penalty supporter said Wednesday he's now sure the Assembly won't act.

"I don't believe he will pass a (death-penalty) bill. I don't believe his conference wants to pass a bill," Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County, later told the editorial board.

The last person put to death in New York, Eddie Lee Mays, was electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining in 1963. He was convicted of fatally shooting a woman during a robbery. The law was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.

Starting in 1977, lawmakers regularly passed a new death-penalty statute, but Govs. Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo vetoed it.

In 1995, the Legislature again passed the statute and newly elected Gov. George Pataki signed it.

However, no one has been executed under the new statute. Seven men have been sent to New York's death row since 1995. All four who have had their case go all the way up the court system have had their death sentences overturned because of different constitutional flaws in the law, and the other three had their sentences commuted to life without parole.

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Dow B. Hover was paid by the state of New York to run its electric chair in the 1950s and '60s. The job may have cost him his life.

For 51 years, a family in upstate New York has closely guarded one of the most explosive, and unusual, secrets any family could have: Its late patriarch, Dow B. Hover, was New York State's executioner. Hover held the job in the 1950s and 1960s and was the last man in the state to activate the electric chair. He left behind evidence of his work—letters from Sing Sing's warden—hidden in a filing cabinet in his house.

Hover, who lived in Germantown and worked as a deputy sheriff for Columbia County, took extreme precautions to ensure no newspaper would ever reveal his identity. On the nights he drove to Sing Sing to carry out an execution, he employed a novel strategy in order to elude pesky reporters: He changed the license plates on his car before he even left his garage.

Hover worked in the infamous Sing Sing death house, where 614 people perished between 1891 and 1963—more people than at any other prison in the nation during that time. New York's last execution took place almost 42 years ago, yet the debate over the death penalty continues. Last summer, the Court of Appeals ruled that the state's death penalty was unconstitutional, and now the public debate has grown even louder. Just in the last week, the state assembly convened two public hearings, in Albany and Manhattan, on the future of New York's death penalty.

Maintaining public support for the death penalty has long depended on keeping the act of killing prisoners shrouded in secrecy—no television cameras, no interviews with the execution team, no revealing of the executioner's identity. Conversations about the death penalty often remain abstract, focused on issues like "justice" and "deterrence." Rarely do they focus on how the death penalty affects those most intimately involved, transforming everyday people into professional killers. The voices and stories of the people who carry out executions are almost never heard.

Dow B. Hover had two children, both of whom are now in their 70s and still live in Germantown. They have not paid much attention to the political debate swirling around the death penalty. In fact, neither likes to think much about the issue at all. But on a recent Saturday, Hover's children finally decided to discuss their family's secret. They spoke to the Voice about their father, his execution work, and his own life's end.

On Aug. 5, 1953, a headline in The New York Times declared: "State Executioner Quits." At the time, the executioner's name was well-known. Joseph P. Francel had held the job for 14 years; his name regularly appeared in the media. Just two months earlier, he'd pulled the switch that sent 2,000 volts of electricity into the bodies of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The married couple, convicted of conspiring to steal atomic secrets for the Soviets, were the most famous of the 137 people Francel executed.

Dow B. Hover, 52, replaced Francel, securing the job through his contacts at the Columbia County sheriff's office. Like his five predecessors, Hover was a trained electrician. Now, in addition to his work as a deputy sheriff, Hover would earn $150 every time he put on a suit, made the 160-mile round-trip to Sing Sing, and pulled the switch for the electric chair. (Adjusted for inflation, this $150 payment is equivalent to about $1,000 today.) Hover would also receive gas money, usually eight cents per mile. Soon, typed one-page letters from Wilfred L. Denno, Sing Sing's warden, began arriving at his home, notifying him of every scheduled execution.

One of the first people Hover was hired to execute was 40-year-old Gerhard Puff. In 1952, Puff traveled from Kansas City to Manhattan with his 17-year-old wife, Annie Laurie. By then, Puff's résumé as a bank robber had already earned him a spot on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Shortly after Puff and his wife arrived at the Congress Hotel on West 69th Street, FBI agents flooded the lobby. The agents were waiting for Puff to emerge from an elevator. Instead, Puff snuck down the stairs, then approached one of the agents and shot the man, killing him.

Puff's execution was scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 12, 1954, at 11 p.m., the usual appointed time for executions. That night, Hover left his Germantown home at 6:30 and arrived at Sing Sing at 9:30, according to travel records he kept. In the meantime, guards had already brought Puff his last meal: fried chicken, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, asparagus tips, salad, and strawberry shortcake. Shortly before 11, two guards led Puff down a 20-foot corridor to the electric chair and ordered him to sit. They fastened five leather straps across his body. A mask was placed over his face and electrodes were attached to his leg and head.

Standing in an alcove adjacent to the death room, facing a switchboard, Hover could see Puff. It was his duty to lower the lever, but not for so long that the body began to cook. Not so long that the reporters and other witnesses seated out front could smell burning flesh. Some men required more shocks than others, and there was a certain skill involved in making sure that Puff was electrocuted just long enough to kill him. At 11:08 p.m., a doctor pressed a stethoscope over Puff's heart and declared him dead.

By 11:30, Hover was back in his car, heading north. This time he appears to have sped more quickly along Route 9G. According to Hover's travel log, he pulled into his driveway at 1:30 a.m.

A few days later, Hover received a letter from Sing Sing's warden with two checks—"one in the amount of $150.00 and the other in the amount of $12.80 covering your services at this institution in the case of Gerhard A. Puff." The language in these letters was always the same—exceedingly formal and intentionally cryptic.

By the time Hover began his work at Sing Sing, both of his children were fully grown and out of the house. Gladys Bohnsack, then 28, had attended Albany Business College and lived with her husband in town. Dow C. Hover, 23, was off fighting in the Korean War. The children did not get the chance to weigh in on whether they thought their father should be an executioner; by the time they learned about the job, he had already accepted it.

All the children knew was that their parents had consulted with their minister. As Gladys recalls, "My mother had a problem with it when he was offered the job, because she knew morally it wasn't right: You're not supposed to kill people. ... She went to our minister to find out ... I don't know what the conversation was, [but] the minister must've said it was all right to do it, that he wasn't going to go to hell because of it."

Everyone in Germantown knew the Hovers. There is a Hover Avenue in town, and Dow B. Hover had grown up on the street, in a family of fruit farmers. He married at 20, and he and his wife, Nellie, became regulars at the Dutch Reform Church. In the late 1930s, he started raising mice in the family's cellar and launched Dow B. Hover Laboratory Animals. After he sold the company in 1952, it became Taconic Farms, which today is one of the world's largest providers of lab mice and rats.

Hover's name regularly appeared in the local paper, including in 1961, when he helped rescue two people from the Hudson River after their sailboat capsized. But his role as executioner was hidden. With very few exceptions, nobody in Germantown knew.

The name of Gerhard Puff or anyone else he had executed never came up at the dinner table in the Hover home, at least not when the children visited. Hover didn't talk about his long, lonely drives to Sing Sing and back. He didn't talk about what it was like to see a teenager strapped into the electric chair (which happened twice in 1954, once in 1955, and twice in 1956). He didn't describe how he felt about killing three people in a single night (which occurred in 1955). He never mentioned the smell of burning flesh, the hissing of electrodes, the scent of singed hair, the sparks circling the prisoner's head. Nor did he express any doubts about whether the people he executed truly deserved to die.

During the years of Hover's tenure, 44 people died in Sing Sing's death house, ranging from nine in 1954 to zero in 1962. That year, Hover did oversee two executions in another state: New Jersey. It had become common practice for Sing Sing's executioner to freelance elsewhere; Hover's expertise was in demand. On the night of Aug. 15, 1963, the man seated in Sing Sing's electric chair was 34-year-old Eddie Lee Mays of Harlem, who had been convicted of murdering a woman with a pistol while robbing a tavern on Fifth Avenue. Hover didn't know it at the time, but this execution would be the last one in New York State.

Hover's children thought their father's work at Sing Sing hadn't changed him much. Despite having to write frequent letters to the warden about execution dates, he still typed with just one or two fingers. He still lived with their mother in a two-story Cape Cod-style house on Maple Avenue. And he still sat down at the kitchen table every day at precisely 5 p.m., knife and fork in hand, waiting for her to serve him dinner. There was one way Hover had changed, however: He seemed to have migraine headaches all the time.

"I'd go visit them and Dad would be on the couch with one of his headaches," Gladys says. "Sometimes he'd get up, have his breakfast, and go lie on the couch, and get up and have lunch and then go lie on the couch. They were severe for a long time." Dow adds: "He used to take medicine, but nothing seemed to work. It just went on for years and years. It seemed like he had headaches all the time."

For at least eight years after the Eddie Lee Mays execution, mail from Sing Sing continued to arrive. The letters concerned upcoming executions; each one of them was stayed or else canceled because the governor commuted the inmate's sentence to life in prison. In April 1971, Hover received a letter from the superintendent of Green Haven prison in Dutchess County: "This is to inform you ... that the electric chair was moved from Sing Sing to this facility last summer. We have, at the present time, three (3) inmates presently awaiting execution. ... I have been advised by Sing Sing that you have rendered a service in previous executions. Will you please inform me if you are still available."

By now Hover was 70 years old. He wrote back the next morning, punching out yet another letter with two fingers on his typewriter. "I am available if needed," he wrote. Hover never did get to perform his "service" at Green Haven. The following year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the way the death penalty had been enforced was unconstitutional.

The term executioner stress describes the toll that carrying out the death penalty takes on those closest to the process. The term appears in Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell. In this 2000 book, former execution team members report suffering numerous psychological symptoms: nightmares, emotional numbness, depression. A former executioner from Mississippi likens his work to "being in a car wreck that's going on forever."

The history of New York's own executioners is equally grim. John Hulbert, the state's third executioner, had the job from 1913 to 1926. One night, right before Hulbert was about to pull the switch on two men, he collapsed. Revived by Sing Sing's doctor, Hulbert finished the job, then spent a week in the prison hospital.

Hulbert oversaw 140 executions before he abruptly quit in January 1926. "His health has been rather poor and he disliked the all-night ride he had to take from Auburn to Sing Sing and back," the state's superintendent of prisons told The New York Times. Hulbert himself said, "I got tired of killing people." Three years later, Hulbert, then 59, ended his own life in the cellar of his house in Auburn. His son found him crumpled on the floor by the furnace, a .38-caliber revolver by his side.

The state's best-known executioner was Hulbert's successor, Robert G. Elliott. From 1926 to 1939, Elliott oversaw 387 executions in six states. He had been New York's executioner for less than a year when his identity became public; a reporter followed him home from Sing Sing to Queens. Angry letters began filling his mailbox. Somebody firebombed his house. In 1939, he wrote Agent of Death: The Memoirs of an Executioner, which concludes: "I hope that the day is not far distant when legal slaying, whether by electrocution, hanging, lethal gas, or any other method is outlawed throughout the United States."

New York's executioners played a pivotal role in the state, enabling New Yorkers to support the death penalty without ever having to do the killing themselves. Each executioner came to embody the public's conflicted attitudes; people were alternately fascinated with and repelled by them. Decade after decade, New York's death penalty turned ordinary men into professional killers, and despite the ritualized aspects of the work, it took a tremendous personal toll.

While Hover's predecessors all became fairly well-known, Hover did not. However, his name did appear in Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House, which was published in 2000. The author, Scott Christianson, obtained access to 153 inmate case files from Sing Sing. The book features black-and-white mug shots, copies of telegrams, last-supper menus, letters from inmates, and some of the warden's correspondence, including one letter mentioning Hover's name.

Last year, Gladys Bohnsack, Hover's daughter, got her first ever call from a reporter. Staffers at Sound Portraits—a nonprofit that produces radio documentaries—had seen Hover's name in Condemned, and an intern, Brett Myers, tracked her down. Gladys, now 78, told Myers she'd been expecting to hear from the media for decades. "I was so surprised no one found him," she said.

She moved into her father's house 15 years ago and had recently discovered a file in the basement that contained letters from the 1960s between her father and Warden Denno. She sent the file to Myers, who later shared it with the Voice. For decades, the letters had been in a metal filing cabinet, buried amid all sorts of other paperwork her father had left behind: assorted bills, his marriage certificate, operating instructions for various appliances, manila files labeled "Fishing Reels," "CB Radio," and "Retirement." There were also folders filled with yellowed newspaper stories he'd saved about the death penalty. In a few cases, these stories were about the same men he had executed.

On a recent Saturday, several other execution-related files turned up, labeled "New Jersey," "Massachusetts," and "Connecticut." Unbeknownst to Gladys, all three states had asked her father to work for them. He'd agreed, but in the end only New Jersey needed him. Unlike Elliott, Hover did not write a memoir. Nor did he leave a diary. The only documents he left behind are those in his home and a few letters hidden in prisoner files from Sing Sing's death house, which are now housed at the New York State Archives in Albany.

Most of what's known about Hover's work as an executioner is stored in the memories of his children. His son, Dow, 73, lives across town from Gladys, in a second-floor apartment on Main Street, above a former gas station. While Gladys still works—she has been Germantown's tax collector for the last 20 years—Dow is too sick to hold a job. A former electrician, he suffers from Huntington's disease. He spends his mornings watching The Price Is Right and waiting for his lunch to arrive from Meals on Wheels.

Seated in his living room on a recent afternoon, Dow shared what he could remember about his father's decision to become an executioner. "He got paid pretty good," Dow says. "I'm sure that had something to do with it." The way Dow tells the story, his father was conflicted about his work. "He felt bad about it," Dow says. "He'd go see a minister and straighten himself out." Did he think his father's struggle with migraines was related to his work as an executioner? "I'm sure it was," he says.

Gladys disagrees. About the Sing Sing job, she says, "He enjoyed doing it." She describes her father as cold and unemotional. "You know how some fathers hold your hand?" she says. "I don't remember that we ever held hands or told each [other] that we loved each other. He just wasn't that kind of person." Taking a job in which he had to execute people "wouldn't have been an issue for him."

She adds: "I don't think he was emotional about it, but how can you know what someone feels inside?"

In recent years, the death penalty in New York State has seemed increasingly abstract, more a political slogan than an actual occurrence. Although Gov. George Pataki reinstated the death penalty in 1995, nobody has been executed in New York State since 1963. Among some politicians, the death penalty remains a favorite issue. A few weeks ago, in his State of the State speech, Pataki credited the death penalty with helping lower crime rates. He has vowed to bring it back, and the debate over its future continues to roil the state.

If Pataki signs another death penalty bill, and if New York does have an execution, of course he and the state's legislators will not be the ones carrying it out. They are not the ones who will be strapping the condemned prisoner to a gurney, rolling him into the execution chamber, preparing the syringes, searching for a vein to stick an I.V. in, starting the flow of the lethal drugs, eyeing the cardiac monitor, and unbuckling the straps once the prisoner is dead.

The machinery used to execute prisoners has changed, but the ritual is fairly similar. If the death penalty returns to New York, the last person who carried out an execution here will not be around to give pointers. Dow B. Hover died in 1990, at the age of 89, five years after his wife died. According to his death certificate, the manner of death was "undetermined circumstances." The story his family tells seems more conclusive.

On June 1, 1990, in the middle of the afternoon, Gladys' son, Jack, stopped by the house to check on him. "Granddad!" he shouted, as he entered the breezeway. No answer. Jack heard the hum of a car's engine. He twisted the handle of the door leading to the garage and discovered that the garage was full of exhaust.

Dow B. Hover sat in the front seat of his Plymouth, the driver's window rolled down, his arms folded across his chest. At first, Jack yanked at the garage door, trying to pull it open, before remembering that he needed to push a button. It was already too late; Hover's skin was cold to the touch. Here, in the same garage where he had once changed his license plates before driving off to Sing Sing, it appears that the state's last executioner ended one more life: his own.

Back to the Titles

By JOEL STASHENKO
Associated Press Writer
February 2, 2005, 2:59 PM EST

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The state's 1990 "sale" of Attica state prison to itself discredited the fiscal policies of the Cuomo administration, and state Comptroller Alan Hevesi says the infamous transaction is continuing to do the same for the Pataki administration.

The Cuomo administration, mired in a fiscal slump, generated $200 million to help pay operating expenses in the 1990-91 fiscal year by having the state Urban Development Corp. float $200 million worth of bonds. The Attica state prison in western New York was used as collateral to secure the bonds.

Even at the time, the transaction was recognized as a fiscal shell game, the barest pretext to use "backdoor" or non-voter-approved borrowing to produce some fast cash for the state treasury. From time to time, Republican George Pataki used the deal to criticize Democrat Mario Cuomo's overreliance on borrowing and gimmicks to balance its budgets.

But Hevesi, a Democrat, said Pataki had several opportunities to redress the wrong and failed to do so. The Pataki administration did save $27 million by refinancing the Attica obligation in 1995, but Hevesi said Pataki made small payments on the principal of the loan in 1996 and no payments on the principal in 1997, 1998 or 1999.

Those three years, Hevesi said, saw the state piling up some of the biggest surpluses in its history. But the money was not used "in an attempt to wash this appalling debt from the state's books," Hevesi said.

At a time when the state had the resources to pay down some of its debt, Hevesi said it did not do so. State-funded debt went up from about $30 billion in 1996, when the fiscal uptick took hold, to more than $35 billion by 2001, when the economy and the state's balance sheet went bust.

So the state continues to carry the Attica debt on its books. To date, the state has paid $242 million in principal and interest on the money Cuomo borrowed to help balance the state budget 15 years ago. If the bonds are paid off at their current rate _ assuming there is not another refinancing that would be likely to stretch out the debt even further _ the state will pay another $323 million in principal and interest.

Thus, the $200 million will cost state taxpayers $565 million by the time it's paid off April 1, 2020.

"That is no way to run a business," said Hevesi, who called the Attica bonding a prime example of the state's increasingly dangerous overreliance on borrowing.

Michael Marr, a spokesman for Pataki's Budget Division, said Pataki established the state's first-ever debt-reduction fund in 1998, when he used $1 billion in surplus money to cut borrowing costs. The fund was used on the highest-cost debt, Marr said.

"The comptroller's Attica plan would have provided less savings to the taxpayers than the other actions that were taken by the state," Marr said.

No one associated with the Attica gimmick has looked good. While condemning the transaction this week, Hevesi had to acknowledge that he voted for it as part of the 2000-01 state budget. Hevesi was a state assemblyman from Queens at the time and, he noted, one of the senior members of the Democratic delegations in the Assembly.

"I didn't understand at the time what the consequences were" of creating the debt in the first place, Hevesi said.

"I was wrong," Hevesi said. "I voted for it. I am responsible as anybody."

But Hevesi argued that realizing how bad the Attica arrangement was for the state fiscally, the governor should have intervened in the mid- and late-1990s when the state had the wherewithal to do so.

At least Pataki is not burdened with having approved the original Attica bonding gimmick. As an assemblyman from Westchester County, he voted against the budget in 1990 and in his other years in the state Legislature.

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