A LOVING DAD DIES IN PRISON

Ed Garcia buried his 68-year-old father the week before Labor Day.
Jose Garcia, who suffered from chronic heart trouble and used a
wheelchair for nearly a decade, succumbed to a final massive heart
attack the morning of Aug. 22 in Green Haven prison.

A Cuban immigrant who came to this country in the 1950s, he had worked
for most of his life as a hotel banquet waiter, was married to the
same woman for 41 years, and put his son and daughter through Catholic
schools.

"He was a fantastic father, looking after us constantly," Ed Garcia,
38, who is now a Wall Street broker, said last week.

His father always taught them to obey the law, Ed recalled. But a
decade ago, already sick and disabled, Jose Garcia made a foolish
mistake and violated his own teachings.

The crack epidemic was at its height then, with so much fast money
chasing the next big high that some corners of Washington Heights
mushroomed into round-the-clock drug bazaars.

Jose Garcia agreed to become a lookout for a drug gang on his block.
Cops busted the operation in 1989.

Prosecutors knew it was Garcia's first brush with the law, that he was
58 and already very sick. They offered him a chance to cop a plea in
exchange for a four-year sentence. All he had to do was testify
against the other gang members. But gang leaders sent word that if he
sang they'd go after his family.

Garcia refused the plea and was convicted at trial of an A-1 drug
felony.

He faced a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life under the
Rockefeller drug laws, even though nobody involved in the case thought
he deserved that much time.

"It was never the People's contention that he was the brains, or
mastermind of the operation, or the head of the organization,"
prosecutor Arlette Hernes told the court in an unusual request for
leniency in sentencing.

"I think it is sad," replied Supreme Court Judge Leslie Crocker
Snyder, who's known as one of the toughest judges in town. "You were
not a major figure here....Unfortunately, I have no choice as to what
the sentence will be, because I certainly would have been happy to
impose a lesser sentence. In your case, I can only hope your health
won't suffer too much."

Garcia was immediately shipped to Green Haven's Unit for the
Physically Disabled, where he ended up in a wheelchair.

His wife, Hilda, children and grandchildren continued to visit him
regularly, and several of them joined the campaign to reform the harsh
Rockefeller laws.

"It tore my family up," Ed Garcia said. "A man who had done so much
for us spending his last years this way."

In late 1994, the family got State Sen. Olga Mendez to appeal to the
governor for a medical parole.

"Jose is suffering from a debilitating heart condition, which coupled
with his advanced years may have tragic results," Mendez warned.

Later that year, Mendez got a response. Garcia's application was under
consideration, the letter said.

The next year, George Pataki took office as governor. Several years
passed before the family got a decision from the Pataki
administration.

"Insufficient basis to warrant the exercise of the governor's clemency
powers," James Murray, the director of the governor's Executive
Clemency Bureau, wrote on July 21, 1998.

By then, reporters at this newspaper had exposed how the Parole Board
under Pataki had granted freedom to 1,277 felons, including 158
imprisoned for the same serious drug charge as Garcia's.

Among those freed were two Israeli mobsters, Ziv Oved and Moshe Cohen,
who were convicted of running multimillion-dollar international drug
rings. Both were released and deported after Brooklyn businessman Leon
Perlmutter, a Pataki friend and fund-raiser, made an appeal. Cohen had
served only six years of an 18-year-to-life sentence.

Another man who got early release was John Kim, convicted of three
armed robberies in Queens. A second Pataki fund-raiser had interceded
in Kim's behalf.

But Jose Garcia got no mercy.

His son talked to Garcia by telephone on Aug. 21. They discussed the
usual things sons and fathers talk about: the baseball season,
politics, the family.

About 7:30 the next morning, a guard making the rounds at Green Haven
noticed inmate Garcia lying on the floor of his cell. One of the
oldest Rockefeller law inmates had completed his maximum sentence.