By Jennifer Warren
By Jennifer Warren
“'She's dangerous. She's someone who has killed,”' Nerney recalled the parole lawyer arguing before the judge.
But Nerney also said the judge laughed at the attorney's statement and after praising the woman's recent successes in school and her spotless five-year record in the state's work release program, he granted her parole.
The work-release program allows prisoners to leave the prison facility during the day to work in a supervised environment, returning to prison in the evening.
State Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Glendale) is preparing to reintroduce legislation that would enable people like Sister Nerney's battered client to take part in the program, which has been put off limits to violent criminal offenders.
In 1994 Gov. Pataki signed into law legislation prohibiting violent offenders, including battered women acting against their attackers, from participating in the state program.
“Battered women on work release were the safest of all people to be on the work release program,” Nerney said. “This [the crime] is a terrible thing that happened, but it's a one-time thing. They're very safe individuals.”
Legislation to repeal the ruling in the cases of abused men and women has had a turbulent ride in past years, with many starts and stops in the state Assembly and Senate. The most recent setback was Gov. Pataki's veto in December. Pataki had insisted on an amendment requiring consultation with the inmate's prosecutor before the prisoner could be considered for release.
At the new senate session set to begin this week, Maltese is poised to reintroduce the bill, now slightly amended to include the governor's suggestion, that would enable these women to be considered for work release.
If passed, the bill is expected to affect between 50 and 100 women inmates, according to staff at the Steps to Prevent Family Violence.
“Research and experience shows that their recidivism rate is about non-existent,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of Correction Association of New York, the umbrella organization for the Women in Prison Project. He stressed that the women this bill was designed for are not a threat to the community.
Beginning in 1997, at the urging of advocates such as those at the Women in Prison Project, Maltese, who is head of the Queens Republican Party, sought to pass a provision to exclude battered women convicts from the 1994 restrictive release bill.
“The lobbying groups felt if I introduced it, as a former DA and deputy chief of homicide, it would get initial approval from the senate Republican majority,” said Maltese in a recent telephone interview.
In the bill's original version, the commissioner of corrections had sole discretion in determining the battered inmates' release. Pataki believed that responsibility should be shared with the district attorney, according to Maltese, and the governor vetoed the bill as it was then written.
“It was hard to understand why the governor vetoed it,” said Gangi. “I assume a political calculation was involved.”
Nerney, who has been working with battered women since 1971, “before we had the term 'battered woman' and certainly before we had the term 'battered woman defendant,'” said the bill had been one of the few projects she had worked on that received such tremendous bipartisan support.
And, in fact, excluding battered women from the work release program was viewed by some as a mistake.
“One legislator told me, 'Oh, but we don't mean battered women.' The light was just hitting him. They had not realized what they had done,” she said, referring to the passing of the 1994 bill.
The bill now includes the provision that the commissioner of corrections should not be autonomous in determining the inmates' release. Instead, the commissioner is required to “obtain the views” of the inmate's prosecutor and in the case of homicides, the district attorney must concur with the commissioner.
The governor's amendment, however, seems to contradict his actions, said Nerney, whose organization is based in Manhattan. She cited two cases of battered women inmates who were denied the governor's year-end pardon even though the prosecutors had approved their release.
Linda White of Far Rockaway and Marie Lapinta of Rockville Center, N.Y. had each received their prosecutor's blessing for an early release this year after White served 11 years in prison for killing her abusive boyfriend and Lapinta had served 17 for second degree murder, yet the governor did not follow the DA's recommendation for release.
“It doesn't make sense to me,” said Nerney, who was with the two women on the day each learned her release was denied.
“I don't know who is making these decisions, whether it's him or some of his staff, but when they got word it was tremendously sad,” Nerney said. “Both are very deserving of it.”
