LAW HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON EARLY RELEASE FOR INMATES

COXSACKIE, N.Y. -- With his swollen legs and a throaty rasp that
whistles like a kettle through his broken teeth, Eddie Jones is an
unlikely man to make history.

He is 89 and dying, a former loan shark who, at 69, shot another man
dead on a Harlem street in what he claimed was self-defense. Now he
is serving a sentence of 25 years to life in a prison hospital bed in
this upstate town, riddled with heart disease and probably cancer,
though his doctors are not certain about the cancer because Mr. Jones
has refused most every medical test.

Mr. Jones's original parole date was in 2015, but he stands to go
free in the coming weeks under a new state law that makes chronically
as well as terminally ill inmates eligible for early release. Inmates
must be deemed physically or cognitively unable to present a threat to society.

The law, passed with the state budget last April, expanded the
eligibility list to add those convicted of violent crimes including
second-degree murder (like Mr. Jones), first-degree manslaughter and
sex offenses, so long as the ailing inmates have served half their time.

But despite fanfare within the corrections field about the
humanitarian and financial benefits of compassionate release -- New
York is one of a dozen states that have expanded, enacted or
streamlined programs over the past two years -- the policy shift has
had minimal effect. Experts attribute this to the fear that freed
inmates, no matter how sick, might commit further crimes, as well as
to the difficulty of placing dying criminals in nursing homes.

"The problem is, when we start trying to put people out, there are
others in the community who are sure we're trying to make more crime
in the community," said Dr. Lester Wright, chief medical officer for
the New York State Department of Correctional Services. "We're also
competing for beds. Some people think my patients aren't as valuable
as other people in society."

The embrace of compassionate release comes as the nation's prison
population is at a historic high -- 1.6 million people as of 2008,
according to the Justice Department -- compounded by a surge in aging
and sick inmates serving longer sentences. In 2008, there were 74,100
inmates age 55 and older, a 79 percent increase from 1999. New York
estimates the cost of caring for a gravely ill inmate at $150,809 a year.

Once released, they are usually cared for by family members or placed
in nursing homes or hospices, their expenses largely covered by
Medicare or Medicaid.

But while the new state guidelines led to a rise in applications for
medical parole -- 202 inmates last year, compared with 66 in 2008 --
they have hardly led to more releases. Mr. Jones would, in fact, be
the first freed under the new guidelines (the seven inmates released
last year were eligible under the old rules).

The National Conference of State Legislatures said 39 states had
compassionate release programs, but many of them also have minimal impact.

In California, where federal judges ordered the state to cut the
prison population by 40,000, three people were granted compassionate
release last year. In Alabama, where prisons are at double their
capacity, four sick inmates were let out on compassionate release in
the 2009 fiscal year; 35 other prisoners in Alabama died while their
applications were being reviewed.

Since New York adopted medical parole in 1992, at the height of the
AIDS crisis, 364 people have been released.

"Medical parole was designed to consider the humanitarian needs of
inmates as well as the safety of the community," said Brian Fischer,
commissioner of the State Department of Correctional Services.
"Anybody can tell us they want medical parole, but the numbers who
qualify are going to be a lot smaller than the ones who want it."

Advocates for prisoners argue that fear of recidivism is
unreasonable, especially for convicts close to death. Corrections
officials said during the 18 years the program in New York has been
in effect, three medically paroled inmates have ended up back in
prison, none for violent crimes.

"Politicians and high-level officials and bureaucrats don't want to
be accused of being soft on crime, even if the prisoners are
terminally ill and there's no possible risk to public safety," said
Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of
New York, a prison advocacy group.

Indeed, the release last summer in Scotland of a sick Libyan man
convicted in the bombing of an airplane over Lockerbie created an
international furor. Last fall, anger over New York's new law erupted
when Gregory Felder, who was convicted of murdering a Radio Shack
employee on Long Island in 2004 and is now gravely ill, was
considered for parole. (He was turned down; and a legislative
loophole that had made him eligible despite having not yet served
half his sentence was subsequently closed.)

Other cases have unfolded far from the public glare. Cinderella
Marrett, 74, who was caught at Kennedy International Airport in 2007
smuggling cocaine in her girdle -- to offset medical expenses, her
daughter said -- was released in May 2009. Stricken with cancer, she
is living in a nursing home in the Bronx.

Since 2005, at least 16 New York inmates have died while waiting for
the parole board to decide their fate.

Timothy McGowan, a once-burly high school dropout from Deer Park,
N.Y., spent half of his 50 years behind bars for 11 felony
convictions, including robbery and second-degree manslaughter. By the
time he was thrown back in prison for a parole violation in April
2009, cancer was consuming his lungs, whittling away his body and
creeping up his brain stem.

In July, when Mr. McGowan could barely walk, his prison doctors
applied on his behalf for compassionate release; his final wish was
to have one last cup of tea with his mother in their Long Island
home. Instead, he died at the Fishkill Correctional Facility on Nov.
7, two days before the parole board was to hear his case.

Among the prisoners in New York newly eligible but denied release
last year was Sergio Black, 38, a former Marine who said he had
fought in the first gulf war.

Mr. Black was convicted in 2005 of raping his former companion, which
he denied. In 2006, his spinal cord was injured in a prison
basketball game. Now a quadriplegic in the Walsh Regional Medical
Unit of the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., Mr. Black is
a "poster boy for medical parole," according to his lawyer, Stephen
Dratch, because it would be difficult for him to commit another
physical crime. But the parole board rejected his application, saying
Mr. Brown "exhibited little or no insight or remorse for the victim."

Mr. Jones, the near-nonagenarian and former loan shark known by his
hospice aides as the Harlem Knight, was supposed to go before the
parole board in December, but the hearing was pushed back twice
because the court had not yet sent a transcript from his sentencing.
His next scheduled parole date is next month, and he remains
bedridden in the hospice at the Coxsackie state prison.

A long-lost niece, Marcy Jones, who lives in Washington, has poured
her heart into pushing corrections officials and the governor's
office to grant the parole. She is optimistic enough that she has
bought her uncle a new wardrobe and has set up a battery of medical
appointments for him.

"Once I get him out, I'm going to advocate for others," Ms. Jones
said. "There are other Uncle Eddies out there."