Parole Board’s Role and Court’s Review Role Explained in Depth

The Third Department, in an extensive and detailed decision, over a dissent, determined petitioner had been properly denied parole, despite his extraordinary achievements in prison, including his earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees.  The petitioner was convicted of felony murder in connection with the death of a police officer:

[T]he record establishes that the Board acknowledged petitioner’s extensive rehabilitative success along with the additional statutory factors, but placed greater emphasis on the seriousness of petitioner’s crime in its determination that release would be incompatible with the welfare of society and so deprecate the seriousness of the crime as to undermine respect for the law, as it is “entitled” to do … . We are thus constrained to affirm — to do otherwise is to implicitly overrule the decades of our well-settled jurisprudence set forth above … . Matter of Hamilton v New York State Div of Parole, 2014 NY Slip Op 05487, 3rd Dept 7-24-14