Hochul Grants Two Clemencies After Months Of Inaction, Leaving Hundreds Still Waiting

By Reuven Blau, The City

Dec. 31, 2025

Some of the most powerful actors in New York’s criminal justice system — district attorneys, prison superintendents and even the judges who imposed the original sentences — have urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to grant clemency to people serving decades behind bars.

Until this week, she hadn’t freed a single one.

On Tuesday afternoon, Hochul issued sentence commutations for two incarcerated men — her first clemency action of the year — after months of inaction that left hundreds of applicants, including people backed by prosecutors and prison officials, waiting for any sign the governor would follow through on her promise to grant clemency on a “rolling basis.”

Despite promising when she took office to issue clemency on a “rolling basis,” Hochul approved no sentence commutations for most of 2025, until granting two on the next-to-last day of the year.

The inaction has left hundreds of incarcerated New Yorkers in limbo, including people whose release has been endorsed by the very officials tasked with prosecuting, imprisoning and, in some cases, sentencing them.

Advocates welcomed the commutations but said they did little to resolve the broader backlog of clemency applications. They noted no one serving a decades long sentence for murder was given mercy.

“It can’t be the case that just two people out of the more than a thousand pending clemency applications merit this kind of relief,” said Steve Zeidman, director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at CUNY School of Law, which helps people in prison prepare clemency applications. “The people who need clemency the most are the people destined to die in prison and who have done everything possible to repair and atone.”

On Tuesday, Hochul commuted the sentences of Terrance Cole, a 59-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran serving 20 years to life for burglary convictions tied to heroin addiction, and Raphael Jackson, 53, who was serving 16 years to life for weapons possession as a persistent offender.

Neither man was released outright; their commutations make them eligible to appear before the state parole board years earlier than originally scheduled, which will decide whether they are suitable for release.

Both men had served more than a decade in prison, earned educational credentials and taken on mentorship or service roles while incarcerated, according to the governor’s office.

Hochul and other New York State governors have traditionally issued some pardons and clemencies around holiday time. A source in her office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the governor plans to act in the near future.

Hochul made headlines in 2022 when she announced a new clemency initiative, appointed an advisory panel and pledged to use the authority more regularly than her predecessors.

“Governor Hochul made significant changes to strengthen New York’s clemency program by creating a panel of experts to advise on cases under review and providing applicants with an updated website and new application forms,” Hochul spokesperson Jess D’Amelia told THE CITY.

For people serving life and de facto life sentences, the promises she made after taking office renewed hopes that New York might finally correct punishments widely seen as excessive relics of a harsher era, Zeidman and other advocates said.

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“People she had revived hope for — people inside and out — now feel like it was a cruel joke,” Zeidman told THE CITY. “The door she was cracking open is now slammed shut.”

The governor is facing a re-election challenge next year from Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a law-and-order conservative who recently slammed Hochul for signing legislation to place a formerly incarcerated person on the state’s correction commission.

As for clemency, Hochul’s staffers have had regular conversations with lawyers and others pushing for clemency, according to multiple insiders involved in the process. They ask detailed questions, such as where the prisoner plans to live after being potentially released and about relationships with family members, those insiders added.

The last time a New York State governor went more than a year without issuing a clemency was during the start of Andrew Cuomo’s administration from 2011 to 2014.

Clemency includes commutations that shorten prison sentences and pardons that erase convictions. It is one of the governor’s broadest and least constrained powers.

Since taking office in August 2021, Hochul has granted clemency — in the form of a sentence commutation — to 17 people. That includes one in 2021, four in 2022, nine in 2023 and three in 2024.

What makes the paralysis this year especially striking, advocates say, is that many pending applications come with extraordinary institutional backing.

Among those cases are two men whose clemency applications were explicitly supported by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and communicated to the governor’s clemency team.

One is Ramon Henriquez, who was 16 years old in April 1991 when he shot and killed two other teenagers — Melvin Longmire and Lyndell Louallen — he says he feared were about to harm him. Henriquez was sentenced to 40 years to life.

He will not be eligible for parole until 2030 when he is 55 years old.

According to Zeidman, senior officials from the Manhattan DA’s office — including then–Executive Assistant District Attorney for Policy Brian Crow — met with Henriquez in prison before informing the governor’s clemency team that they supported a sentence commutation.

As part of that process, Crow asked whether Henriquez would be willing to participate in restorative justice efforts with the victims’ family, a request Henriquez agreed to. The process never moved forward, through no fault of his own.

Henriquez, now 51, has pursued college coursework successfully while incarcerated and suffers from multiple serious health conditions, including heart problems, according to a medical assessment submitted as part of his clemency application.

“He is no longer the scared and reckless 16-year-old who pulled a gun in 1991 when he felt threatened by the neighborhood kids,” his clemency application states.

Advocates point out that Henriquez is one of hundreds of people in New York sentenced as teenagers before Raise the Age reforms ended the automatic prosecution of 16-and 17-year-olds as adults.

Even as neuroscience and national sentencing practices have evolved, their punishment has largely remained frozen in time, untouched by reforms meant to recognize growth, change and diminished youth culpability, criminal justice reformers contend.

While incarcerated, Henriquez earned his GED and is currently enrolled in Hudson Link’s associate degree program. He has spent years volunteering as a cook for special events and working in a range of institutional roles, including grievance representative, porter, electrician and mechanic, according to his clemency application.

Among fellow incarcerated people, Henriquez is known as “the counselor” for his willingness to listen and help others work through personal conflicts, Zeidman said. He also maintains close relationships with his four siblings and their families and speaks with his mother daily.

Another case the Manhattan DA’s office supported involves Darryl Powell, who is serving life without parole in a homicide case that prosecutors once offered to resolve with a sentence of nine to 18 years, according to Zeidman and the clemency application.

Powell rejected that plea offer on the advice of his court-appointed lawyer, went to trial and received life without parole.

Powell’s case dates back to Sept. 11, 1997, when 27-year-old Freddy Pina was shot and killed on a sidewalk outside his apartment building on Payson Avenue in upper Manhattan. Powell, then 32, was arrested later that day and charged with first-degree murder, even though he was not present at the shooting, according to the clemency application.

Earlier that night, Powell had been with a friend who sold drugs and complained about a financial dispute with another man. The friend asked Powell if he knew someone who could “solve a problem.” In response, Powell contacted his brother-in-law and drove him to Dyckman Street, dropping him off several blocks away from where the intended target was supposed to be. Powell then said he left the area.

What happened next remains murky.

The intended target was not harmed. Instead, his brother-in-law walked several blocks away and fatally shot Pina, a man with no connection to the dispute. Pina later died at Harlem Hospital.

Powell has since accepted responsibility for his role in setting the events in motion and has repeatedly expressed remorse.

“The man I am now would not have participated in something like that,” he said in a recent interview. “I like to think I would have stopped it.”

More than two decades later, Powell has said he regrets his decision to reject the proposed plea offer.

“I wish I had pleaded guilty and taken responsibility for my actions,” he said. “Every day, I regret that decision.”

Like Henriquez, Powell has completed college coursework in prison, a factor criminologists widely view as a strong indicator of low recidivism risk. Last year, Powell had an essay published in USA Today about the New York Knicks and how their resurgence gave him hope for his own future. The piece was later selected for an annual anthology of the best sports writing of the year.

In early 2024, Crow told Zeidman that the Manhattan DA’s office had informed the governor’s clemency team that it supported sentence commutations for both Henriquez and Powell.

Crow has since left the DA’s office, and the office’s current position is unclear.

“As always, we will provide the governor’s office with the facts and information necessary to assist with fair and just clemency outcomes,” Manhattan DA spokesperson Douglas Cohen told THE CITY.

For Zeidman, the cases underscore a larger point: that Hochul is declining to act even when clemency applications come wrapped in the strongest possible institutional endorsements.

“If you’re looking for politically safe cases, these are them,” he said. “When the district attorney, the prison superintendent and sometimes even the sentencing judge say this person should be home — that’s the system itself telling the governor it’s time. And she’s ignoring it.”

Under state correction department rules, when a person applies for clemency, prison superintendents are asked to review their record and formally recommend, oppose or take no position on release. Prosecutors and sentencing judges are also consulted. In rare cases, all three align.

“There are cases sitting on the governor’s desk right now where the superintendent has recommended clemency,” Zeidman said. “There are cases where the district attorney supports it. There are cases where the sentencing judge supports it. Those are easy cases. And nothing is happening.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.