Criminal Justice New York State

Kathy Hochul’s Parole Board Blunders

The governor promised to fill the chronically understaffed Board of Parole. Nearly half of her nominations have ended in disaster.

Chris Gelardi · September 10, 2024

Three empty seats inside of a wood-paneled hearing room.

As part of her first State of the State policy agenda in 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul promised to fully staff the board. Her efforts have resulted in one mishap after another. | Denis Kuvaev / Canva

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Brandon Stradford was nearly two hours late to his first day as a commissioner on New York’s Board of Parole. He said he’d accidentally slept in.

It was a rocky start to his first high-level government job, and things only got rockier from there. According to testimony from the board’s chair, Stradford would arrive to meetings and parole hearings late, or not at all, without explanation. When he did show up, he sometimes left for long periods. And when he stuck around, he often exhibited “extreme sleepiness,” occasionally dozing off.

He didn’t last long on the parole board, which decides whether to release incarcerated people who’ve hit their minimum prison sentences. Two months into his tenure, which began a year ago, the board placed Stradford on leave. Governor Kathy Hochul approved firing him this past May.

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Hochul, who nominates all parole commissioners, had given Stradford his spot on the board. It’s a high-stakes job: Two- or three-member board panels determine the fates of thousands of incarcerated people every year. They decide cases at a rapid pace, historically spending mere minutes on each one.

And there aren’t enough commissioners. For at least a decade, the board has been several down from its full capacity of 19, according to available state reports. As a result, each commissioner hears, conservatively, nearly 1,000 release cases annually — on top of hundreds of other types of administrative meetings — according to the limited available data. Parole commissioners in most other states have far smaller caseloads.

As part of her first State of the State policy agenda in 2022, Hochul promised to fully staff the board. Her efforts have resulted in one mishap after another.

Three of Hochul’s seven known parole board nominations have crashed and burned. One of her picks didn’t make it through the confirmation process after state senators, who vote to confirm or reject the governor’s nominees, grilled him over his role in violent protest crackdowns during his time as a top police official. After that, Hochul tapped Stradford — a local bureaucrat and failed politician — at the legislative schedule’s last minute, giving senators mere hours to vet him. Later, around the time of Stradford’s ouster, Hochul nominated another candidate — only to have senators dismiss him because they surmised that she had nominated him as a political favor.

In the aftermath of the nomination chaos, most of which has not been previously reported, the Board of Parole remains understaffed. What’s more, 11 of the parole board’s 16 current members are serving on expired terms — so-called zombie commissioners — including three whose terms expired over five years ago. Hochul hasn’t sought to renominate or replace them.

The staffing dysfunction at least partially stems from the governor’s ideological differences with progressive legislators and criminal justice reform advocates. New York’s parole commissioners have wide discretion over whether to release someone from prison: There’s almost no publicly available data on how individual commissioners wield their power, but limited numbers obtained by New York Focus in 2022 suggest that release rates can vary widely depending on the attitudes of individual board members. While Hochul has, with some exceptions, sought to appoint criminal justice institutionalists to the board, the reformers have for years pushed for policies and commissioners that will overhaul New York’s parole system and release more people from prison in a timely manner.

“Parole commissioners hold an incredibly important position,” said TeAna Taylor, an organizer and policy director for the nonprofit Release Aging People in Prison. “And it deserves to be filled by someone with the experience and values to really be able to fairly consider someone for their readiness for release.”

The 2023 state legislative session was supposed to end on a Thursday in June, but lawmakers were still in the Capitol on Friday, working through a backlog of bills. That morning, the governor’s office reached out to Stradford, he later testified. Hochul was nominating him for a seat on the parole board, and senators had to vote on his nomination before they wrapped up for the year.

Each year, New York’s executive fills dozens of board seats, commissioner positions, and judgeships. And each year, the governor waits until the legislative session’s final weeks — or days — to issue a flurry of nominations. Senate committees must then hold confirmation hearings and votes while working through hundreds of bills in the days before the legislature goes home for the second half of the calendar year. Senators don’t have time to fully vet candidates, and the votes often end up acting as rubber stamps.

Like Stradford, at least some of the senators responsible for confirming him only learned of his nomination the day after they were supposed to finish for the year. The Senate corrections and finance committees, which vote on all parole board nominees, scheduled a confirmation hearing for early that evening and video conferenced him in.

“We have not gotten a lot of sleep this week, just to let you know,” finance committee chair Liz Krueger said at the start of proceedings.

Kathy Hochul’s parole board nominees last year had “been closely associated with the system we seek to reform, which raises profound concerns.”

—Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus

Stradford stumbled through long-winded, at times difficult-to-comprehend opening remarks — doing so “without a script,” he noted. He argued that he was a regular person with whom incarcerated people could identify. He had never worked as an officer of the criminal-legal system, he said. He was a Metropolitan Transit Authority Police chaplain and a longtime administrative staff analyst for various New York City agencies. Stradford referred to himself as a “career human resources expert,” which he insisted taught him how to ensure that people get the opportunities they deserve.

He failed to mention that he also had an unsuccessful side career as a politician. He ran for state Senate in 2018, coming in last place in the Democratic primary with 12 percent of the vote. Three years later, he came in fourth place of five in the Democratic primary for Staten Island borough president. (His borough president campaign’s Facebook page posted a graphic that read, “Vote Brandon Stradford for City Council.”) During his parole board confirmation hearing, Stradford claimed he had been preparing for a seat on the parole board for about two and a half years — roughly since his defeat in the borough president race.

“Anyone can say that they might know me, or know a person like me,” Stradford mused during his opening remarks. “And to where that benefits me is because it allowed me to see that, just because a person may have made some mistakes, do they want to stay in that same area where they made those mistakes? What if I had a word or two, or was able to offer an opportunity that would allow that person to come out of where they were and be the best person they can be?”

After 10 minutes, Krueger told Stradford to stop. “We’re doing double duty of debating on the floor as we’re with you,” she reminded him, before allowing senators to ask him questions.

After less than half an hour of inquiries, mostly into Stradford’s background, the committee members voted to move him forward. Only two dissented — both Republicans, including Patrick Gallivan, a former parole board member himself. Senate corrections committee chair Julia Salazar called his testimony “refreshing,” while fellow criminal justice reformer Jamaal Bailey referred to Stradford as an “ideal” candidate. The full Senate went on to confirm him later that evening.

Just over a week before Stradford’s confirmation, another of Hochul’s nominees had an even rougher hearing.

In May 2023, a year and a half after promising to fill the parole board, Hochul nominated her first four candidates. (In the interim, the number of vacancies grew.) The slate included two former probation officers, a former police official, and an attorney who’d worked as both a prosecutor and a public defender.

The influential Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus, which advocates for parole reform, was not pleased. Most of Hochul’s nominees had “been closely associated with the system we seek to reform, which raises profound concerns,” the group complained in a statement asking Hochul to reconsider. The caucus had recommended a slate of candidates whom it believed better suited its reform goals, it said, but the governor hadn’t chosen any of them.

Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, the caucus’s chair, said caucus members want parole commissioners “who understand that this system of mass incarceration, which has its roots in systemic racism, needs to be reformed so that we are actually rehabilitating individuals.”

In the usual end-of-session rush, the Senate confirmed the probation officers and the attorney nominated by Hochul. The police official, however, had a record that Senate progressives couldn’t overlook.

A jail cell with keys in the lock seen through a dirty window.

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Ernest Hart was a police accountability proponent when the New York City Police Department hired him as its top legal adviser in 2019. He had previously been an assistant district attorney, a criminal court judge, and head of the city agency that investigates complaints against the police.

A little over a year into Hart’s NYPD tenure, the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd sparked one of the largest protest movements in United States history. The NYPD responded with aggressive tactics that became the subject of international human rights organization inquiries and led to a $13 million legal settlement. One of the NYPD’s most violent suppressions took place at a nonviolent June 2020 protest march in the Bronx, where this reporter was present. Police arrested 236 people and left 61 with injuries, including broken noses, fingers, and teeth, according to Human Rights Watch.

In a letter to Human Rights Watch, Hart justified the police response. He falsely claimed that the coalition that organized the protest invited “local gangs” to attend and engage in violence and that organizers encouraged “killing and injuring police officers.” He also justified the arrest of legal observers by asserting that they were not considered “essential workers” under the city’s curfew policies.

During his parole board confirmation hearing last year, which lasted about 25 minutes, senators repeatedly asked Hart about his time with the NYPD and his letter to Human Rights Watch. “There were things with the police department that I didn’t like,” he said. Hart said NYPD brass had “heated discussions” about the protests. “There was a lot of pushback” in internal department discussions, “and I never held back my opinion.” Hart did not respond to requests for comment.

After his testimony, senators discussed the possibility of voting against Hochul’s full slate of parole board nominees. When the slate made its way to the floor for a full Senate vote, Hart’s name wasn’t among the nominees. Hochul’s office did not respond to questions about whether she pulled his candidacy.

The class of new Board of Parole members that included Stradford went through six weeks of training before hearing cases. Stradford, who started in late August 2023, never finished his.

In a hearing this year, the board’s chair, Darryl Towns, recounted that Stradford was frequently late or absent and fell asleep while observing parole hearings while incarcerated people made cases for their freedom.

In late October, Towns sat down with Stradford to discuss his performance. “I did not want to make any assumptions” about the reasons for Stradford’s absentmindedness, Towns said, so he told him about the state’s Employee Assistance Program, which offers referrals for those going through personal, mental health, or other crises. Towns ended the meeting agreeing to give Stradford another shot.

Two days later, Stradford was scheduled to observe a day of hearings. He didn’t show up, and Towns couldn’t get in touch with him until 1 pm, even though the hearings started at 8:30 in the morning. Stradford said he had been hospitalized, but wouldn’t produce any hospital paperwork, Towns said.

At that point, Towns testified, he had to “protect the board and isolate Mr. Stradford.” He told Stradford to turn over his state-issued property, which he did less than a week later — with the exception of his ID card and badge. He kept those, Towns alleged.

Reached on his cell phone, Stradford told New York Focus that he would “probably have a whole lot to say” about his time on the parole board, but that he was busy and had to call back later. He didn’t, and he did not respond to follow up calls and text messages.

Towns directed requests for comment to a state prison and parole agency spokesperson, who said that the board chair’s testimony “speaks for itself.”

In February, state officials moved to oust Stradford — a rare measure. After a request from Stradford to delay a removal hearing, state officials held it in May. Stradford didn’t show up. The governor fired him less than two weeks later.

By the time the state finalized Stradford’s removal this spring, it was the end of another legislative session, and Hochul nominated two more people to the parole board.

One, Laura El-Bahtity, was a longtime public defender. While El-Bahtity wasn’t on the radar of some advocacy organizations, Taylor of Release Aging People in Prison said that reform advocates were excited about her. The governor’s office and senators had discussed her candidacy ahead of time, and she sailed through the confirmation process, boosting the parole board roster to 16.

The other was a local Long Island legislator named DuWayne Gregory, according to three Senate sources who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss secret deliberations.

Some senators were confused about Gregory’s nomination. He doesn’t appear to have publicly expressed interest in parole justice, and his legislative bio describes no experience working in the criminal-legal system. After retiring from the Army, he worked in local government in the town of Babylon, then was elected to five terms as a Suffolk County legislator.

Eleven of the parole board’s 16 current members are serving on expired terms, including three whose terms expired over five years ago.

The Senate sources said they saw Hochul’s nomination of Gregory for the $170,000-a-year job as an attempt to curry favor with moderate Democrats in Suffolk County, a political battleground for the party, ahead of this year’s general elections.

Gregory is a close ally of the chair of the Suffolk County Democratic Party, Rich Schaffer, who has historically wielded outsized influence over whether Democrats succeed statewide. Schaffer launched Gregory’s political career two and a half decades ago when he appointed him as Babylon’s citizens advocate and his special assistant. In 2013, Schaffer helped shield Gregory from a rival county boss who tried to demote a number of Suffolk County officials. Five years later, Schaffer declined to endorse a Democrat in the local congressional race unless Gregory — who’d lost the same race in 2016 — entered, City & State reported. Gregory lost a second time, and the two now work together in Babylon, where Schaffer is town supervisor and Gregory is on the town council.

Reached by email, Gregory said that “the Governor’s office has asked that all media inquiries be referred to their media team.” The governor’s press office did not respond to multiple inquiries sent over the course of several weeks. Schaffer did not respond to requests for comment.

While not all senators agreed on what to do about Gregory’s nomination — one Senate source argued that it was a small price to pay to appease Hochul — some found it unpalatable to use a parole board appointment as an apparent political favor. Shortly after Hochul handed down the nomination, senators warned her office that his candidacy wouldn’t pass. Possibly sensing the potential embarrassment of another Senate rejection — a sore spot for the governor — Hochul pulled Gregory’s candidacy, according to the Senate sources.

Thirty-three months, four successful nominations, and three failures after Hochul promised to fully staff the Board of Parole, it remains three commissioners down.