A NIGHTMARE BEHIND BARS

John Valverde's Fight for Freedom

Former Governor George Pataki's legacy of not freeing rehabilitated
violent offenders is alive and well in New York State. Today thousands
of parole petitioners are ready to return to society as productive
citizens but remain stuck in prison because of the politics of
incarceration.

This unwritten policy persists in spite of newly installed Governor
Elliot Spitzer's attempt to correct the criminal justice sector, as
evidenced by his recent calls to remove the exorbitant charges on
collect calls

Statistically it is a not-so-well-known fact that offenders who commit
crimes such as murder are actually less likely to return to jail than
nonviolent offenders. Nevertheless, after completing their sentences
and coming to terms with their crimes, they are still wasting away in
New York State gulags. Time and again the parole board fails to weigh
all of the relevant statutory factors together with the prisoner's
positive accomplishments and productive behavior while incarcerated.
Instead, the parole board focuses almost entirely on the nature of the
petitioner's crime.

A case in point is the story of John Valverde, a 36-year-old Queens
man who recently was denied parole for his third consecutive time. He
has already served 15 years of a 10- to 30-year sentence for ending
the life of a freelance photographer, Joel Schoenfeld, a 47-year-old
West Village photographer with a history of enticing young female
models to his studio and sexually assaulting them. In 1991, Schoenfeld
raped his 19-year-old model girlfriend. After unsuccessfully seeking
help from the police--powerless to act without the brutalized and
traumatized victim coming forward--John Valverde, then a 21-year-old
student, confronted Schoenfeld. The ensuing argument turned violent
and John shot and killed Schoenfeld. The single bullet fired that
night changed not only John's life forever but also that of his
family. His mother, brother and sister have fought endlessly to free
John and themselves from the nightmare of his continuing ordeal behind
bars.

John regrets the act he committed ending the life of an individual who
took the honor away his former girlfriend many years ago. I know this
because I was with John during his time of remorsefulness at Sing Sing
prison when I was serving a 15-to-life sentence under the Rockefeller
Drug Laws. In 1995, we both graduated from the New York Theological
Seminary. Despite the negative environment that surrounded him, John
managed to transcend the prison experience by finding purpose in his
life through helping others. He taught religion, volunteered as a
tutor for men who could not read, and worked with AIDS patients.

The hard time John served in a maximum security prison transformed him
from the 21-year-old boy who had made the biggest mistake of his life
into a man who now understands the horror of his crime. Apparently all
inconsequential in the view of the parole board, which offered the
following reasoning in John's case: "The violence displayed in this
crime outweighs everything else."

Why are violent offenders, who seem to be ready to return to society,
being hit by the parole board on a continuous basis? The answer is
simple. Politicians and parole officials are afraid of granting parole
to violent prisoners out of fear of falling from grace in the eyes of
the public. Recently, the New York Parole Commissioner was demoted
from his position by Governor Pataki after causing and uproar with the
release a high-profile offender involved in the murder of two upstate
police officers.

If we look at the history of why violent offenders are routinely
denied parole we can see how it could have evolved out of the cash
incentives for new prison construction given by the federal government
to states that ended parole for violent offenders in 1994 under the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This law was devised to
give states fiscal incentives to build prisons if they in turn enacted
laws that result in violent offenders serving 85% of their sentences.
Grants were made available for states to build more prisons coupled
with an effective end to parole. From 1996 to 2000, New York State
received around $200 million under this Act.

On April 20, family and friends of John Valverde will gather in front
of the Albany Supreme Court in New York to rally on John's behalf, and
in support of overturning the parole board's latest denial. We are
calling on Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who represents the parole
board, to look into the totality of facts in this case so John and his
family may receive proper judicial relief.

It is time for the parole board to free model prisoners like John
Valverde. We cannot minimize the seriousness of the crime he committed
but neither can we minimize the tragedy of his plight to regain his
freedom. He is just one of many individuals who have paid their debt
to society for the crimes they committed but kept in prison because of
the "Politics of Incarceration."