Anthony Annucci’s Ten-Year Temp Job

Someone locked up in Annucci’s prison system is now trying to remove him on these grounds. Jeremy Zielinski, a man incarcerated at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, sued Annucci, Governor Kathy Hochul, and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins last fall, arguing that Annucci’s status violates state law and seeking an injunction to oust him.

Most lawsuits by incarcerated litigants don’t make it far. Zielinski’s suit defied that pattern. The state attorney general’s office moved to dismiss the suit in December, but in February, Albany County Supreme Court Judge Peter Lynch denied their motion.

“The 10-year duration of the de facto appointment [of Annucci] appears to be extraordinary and raises the question of how long a constitutional failure may continue,” Lynch ruled.

Now, Zielinski is seeking an ambitious raft of system-wide reforms and a promise that Annucci be confirmed by the end of the 2023 session or resign within two years. Spokespeople for Hochul and the prison agency declined to comment on the pending litigation. A spokesperson for Stewart-Cousins did not respond to New York Focus’s request for comment.

In a May 1 legal filing, Attorney General Leititia James’s office argued that “there is no statutory or constitutional time limit by which an executive branch agency head must be appointed,” and that the lawsuit should be dismissed, calling Zielinski’s interpretation of the law “convoluted” and “flawed.” The office contends that Annucci’s title is technically “executive deputy commissioner” on the state’s payroll, though he is identified as acting commissioner on DOCCS’s website, in Senate hearings, in emails from DOCCS to New York Focus, and in pleadings the state itself filed in the lawsuit.

The suit follows Hochul’s failed attempt to make Annucci’s appointment official. After the governor recommended him for confirmation last January, the acting commissioner faced hours of questioning from two Senate committees considering his nomination — the first time they’d had a chance to do so. Some lawmakers forced Annucci to admit instances of deep dysfunction; others stated plainly they had no intention of voting in his favor.

“I had been in the Senate for four years and had never seen a nominee rejected from the governor, and certainly not a commissioner,” Senator Julia Salazar — who voted to advance, but not recommend, Annucci’s nomination — told New York Focus. “I think it was a really important demonstration of the Senate’s ability to reject a nomination.”

But nothing changed. The governor tabled her nomination, and the candidacy never went to a floor vote. The “acting” title was left to linger.

Amid the systemic harms that Zielinski says flourished under Annucci’s watch, the prison department acquired and used a faulty drug testing system beginning in 2019. False positive tests resulted in 1,632 incarcerated people being wrongfully punished, subjecting some to solitary confinement, lost jobs, and lost privileges such as phone time and participation in a familial visit program, according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General.

When things go wrong, a grievance process is supposed to help incarcerated people find recourse. This too has become “corrupted with systematic self-interest, dishonesty, and abuse to the point of abject uselessness,” Zielinski alleges.

In an investigation published last year, New York Focus reported that after a different incarcerated man accused a corrections officer of sexual assault — and attempted to pursue the grievance process — he was transferred between prisons five times in what he characterized as a retaliatory harassment campaign. He also alleged that he was denied adequate medical treatment for his wounds, a problem that has repeatedly come up in prisons under Annucci.

“Certainly everybody who is incarcerated is deserving of whatever medical care we can deliver, same as John Q. Public,” Annucci said in one of last year’s hearings. But experts, advocates, incarcerated people, and former prison medical staff have documented that care as grossly inadequate in practice.

That inadequate care is among the factors that have made the New York prison system a deadly place. Zielinski notes that, since 2013, more than 1,200 incarcerated people have died under Annucci’s watch. The lawsuit points to “incidents of almost unbelievable staff brutality” in addition to substandard medical and mental health care. This violence comes with a significant price tag: The department has paid millions of dollars in judgments and settlements in cases involving abuse by corrections officers.

The complaint also highlights a recent policy that severely limits the number of packages incarcerated people can receive from family and loved ones, and bars them from mailing fresh or packaged food — often a vital supplement to what’s provided in prison mess halls. If families want to send food or other products, they have to purchase it through “approved vendors,” often at a high markup.

This is the second such policy to rear its head under Annucci. In 2018, a similar “secure vendor” package program was shut down by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo after pushback from incarcerated people and advocates, and a separate policy that had prevented people in nine prisons from receiving books by mail for years was finally amended.

In the mid-2000s, as general counsel and deputy commissioner, Annucci used his administrative powers to unilaterally add post-release probation or parole to incarcerated people’s sentences. When a federal appellate court ruled that that was illegal, Annucci ignored the order and, in the court’s words, “deliberately refused to change [the department’s] procedures to bring them into compliance.” In recent years, courts have begun awarding damages to people wrongfully imprisoned as a result of Annucci’s violations of the law.

Some senators share Zielinski’s skepticism of the value that Annucci’s 37-year experience brings.

“The prevailing wisdom on corrections is much different than it was even a few years ago,” Senator John Liu told New York Focus. “So there needs to be change, and it’s hard to have real change when the same person is in charge for so long.”

“Everything fell into place this year,” Annucci said at the hearing, “and I am very proud to be considered, as well as humbled to be considered for this extremely important position.”

Since the Senate’s rebuke of his nomination, the acting commissioner has continued to frustrate some lawmakers. Last year, in the face of a new parole reform law, Annucci’s DOCCS kept hundreds of parolees who should’ve been released in jail. A landmark law reforming New York’s solitary confinement rules went into effect just weeks later — and prisons have violated every major facet of it since. Annucci himself has handed down an illegal directive ordering prisons to shackle everyone in isolation to desks while they participate in hours-long “therapeutic” programming.

Lawmakers in Albany have noticed his obstinance, filing repeated public comments. The lack of compliance with the solitary confinement law constitutes “a humanitarian crisis in our prisons,” Senator Salazar told New York Focus. But thus far, their impact has been negligible.

The New York constitution states that the commissioner “shall be appointed by the governor by and with the advice and consent of the senate.” The failure to earn that Senate approval, Zielinski’s suit argues, renders Annucci’s role unconstitutional.

In an affidavit filed along with the state’s May 1 response, Annucci holds that his occupation of the top role should not stop the Senate from appointing an official DOCCS commissioner, whether it’s him or someone else.