That, she discovered, is far from the truth.

Just as the pandemic has revealed racial disparities in access to health care (and vaccines), dig into New York State’s parole process and you will find racial disparities in access to justice. An analysis by Albany’s Times-Union newspaper found that of 19,000 parole decisions made in New York State over the past two years, 41 percent of white inmates in New York State prisons were granted parole, while only 34 percent of Black inmates and 33 percent of Hispanic inmates were paroled. And an earlier study by The New York Times found that fewer than one in six Black or Hispanic men were released at their first hearing, compared with one in four white men.

Overall, 12,000 incarcerated individuals are considered for parole in New York State every year, and a large majority are denied. Worse, most of the families and pro bono lawyers who are trying to help these prisoners will never know why—the process is that opaque.

“Too often, with issues around mass incarceration, we look at the beginning of the system: who is getting arrested, the sentences they are getting,” says Rayner. “But more and more, there’s a new understanding that if we are going to decarcerate [the prison population], parole is a key area of reform.”

With nearly 1,000 parole board transcripts and interviews, assessment reports, and appeal decisions online, all in a searchable, free, and publicly accessible database, it’s possible for families, advocates, attorneys, and, really, anyone, to discover which parole commissioners are making what decisions and exactly what happens in those once-mysterious parole and parole-appeal meetings, and to look for patterns and precedents that can aid anyone focused on parole be more effective and powerful in their efforts.

Now, in the wake of Black Lives Matter as well as two pending New York State laws aimed at reforming the parole system, Fordham Law’s parole project is ramping up. A $100,000 grant from Goldman Sachs will pay for a fellow focused on parole work and add crucial resources to expand the program. “The stars are aligned,” says Rayner, referring to both the grant and the aforementioned two New York State laws up for consideration that could make it easier for those eligible for parole to get it: the Fair and Timely Parole bill and The Elder Parole Bill.

The grant will also go a long way toward helping the parole project team overcome a number of challenges, as well as continue to grow the database. “For any meaningful statistical information, you need a certain volume of documents, and it takes time to get them, to redact names of individuals for privacy, and to revise the database to stay up to date with the most current laws,” explains Yael Mandelstam, the Maloney Library’s associate librarian for technical services.

That growth can’t come soon enough for those who are out in the world helping incarcerated individuals up for parole get the freedom they deserve. “I get emails every week from attorneys who are looking for unpublished court decisions, sample briefs, appeals, and first thing I do is send them to the Parole Information Project. It’s a go-to resource for anyone,” says Michelle Lewin, co-founder and executive director of The Parole Preparation Project, a grassroots organization that advocates for incarcerated individuals going through the parole process. Both Lewin and Rayner have been focused on the issue of parole for years, and both played a major role in bringing Fordham Law’s project to light in 2019.

Before then, it’s fair to say that for attorneys and families with loved ones up for parole, getting the necessary information to release eligible incarcerated individuals was beyond difficult. “I didn’t know a lick about parole litigation outside of TV and the movies before I did the criminal defense clinic in my 3L year at Fordham Law,” says Anthony Lombardo ’19, who continues to do pro bono work in the area as an associate at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP in Parsippany, New Jersey. “But I have to say, I learned that it’s a shocking process—outdated, arbitrary to its core, and absolutely frustrating.” Lombardo points to one instance when, before the database was up and running, he was unable to obtain a client’s parole file in time to perfect the administrative appeal he was working on. “My firm paid $700 for the file, and by the time it showed up—too late to use—I saw that it contained erroneous information. But by that time, the judge’s hands were tied. He told me there was nothing he could do.”

Over time, Rayner amassed an impressive collection of court and administrative appeal decisions, but there was a problem: “The documents were completely unusable because I had no time to organize them.”

Thinking beyond the four walls of the library and bringing information to the wider community is part of Maloney’s ethos. “Information is power—it’s a road to freedom and a road to justice,” says Melnick. “People think of a library as a storehouse for books, but that’s less and less our purpose. It’s about access to information. Information is a source of freedom, justice, and equality, and more information is always better.”

To help get that information out there, Melnick turned to Yael Mandelstam. Mandelstam, who started her career organizing fabric libraries, calls herself a “natural organizer of information.” She quickly realized that it wouldn’t be enough to simply throw the documents up online. She had more ambitious plans in mind. “It was Yael who suggested we think about what more we could do with the documents,” says Rayner. She is also the one who started talking about metadata—a subset of information that can provide more information on other data. “She began picking my brain and Michelle Lewin’s brain about the type of information we needed.”

The hope: that this metadata could eventually reveal patterns that would help attorneys with their own cases. Says Rayner: “Just the other day, I asked Yael what the reversal rate was for each commissioner on appeals, and because of the metadata she’d collected and input, she was able to do a quick spreadsheet for me.”

The information coming to light has already made a difference for families as well as pro bono attorneys and their clients. “Every client has a unique set of issues, and the database is so helpful for finding out what issues others have litigated, or to see how a judge ruled in prior petitions and what arguments they found persuasive,” says Chris Fennell ’17, an associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. Like Lombardo, he participated in Fordham Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic as a 3L, working closely with Rayner and Cheryl Bader, clinical associate professor of law. “That’s when my teammates and I had the opportunity to represent our first parole client, someone who had been denied two times,” he recalls. “The judge eventually ruled in our client’s favor. Seeing how hard our client had worked for decades, and how we were able to successfully demonstrate all the things he’d done that the Board had ignored or gotten wrong when they denied him parole—well, it gave me the bug for that kind of work,” says Fennell, who now focuses on parole issues pro bono. “Martha and Cheryl are amazing—they’ve created a clinical experience that motivates people to explore access to justice issues while teaching them what it means to represent a client. And now, Martha has set up a resource that is sustainable, accessible to others outside the law school, and will only get more comprehensive with time.”

“Michelle and I started teaming up informally—she was working on preparation for parole and I was working on parole denials—and we came together in appealing those denials,” recalls Rayner. The two women, along with Steve Zeidman, a law professor at CUNY, Lewin’s alma mater, are making it easier for anyone interested in parole and access to justice to get results.

“We realized there was an access-to-justice problem for parole applicants who had been denied—they needed legal representation,” says Rayner. “So we decided to put together a group of pro bono lawyers to represent people who had been denied parole.” Lewin did the recruiting, then she and Rayner created a training program that they brought to several law firms. “We’d get 30, 40, 50 associates and partners in a room,” says Rayner. The two also created a parole appeals manual. “But it needs updating,” says Rayner. “As we go along, we’re learning more and more.”

What’s been clear from the beginning: Changing the convoluted parole process in New York State requires the kind of passion and persistence that Rayner, Lewin, Mandelstam, and Melnick bring to the table. “I don’t think people should live out their senior years locked up in a cage, punished forever,” says Lewin. “We want to reunite them with their communities.”

That’s not easy, partly because of the legal standard currently used by New York State’s parole board when considering granting parole. “The law says that when considering eligible individuals, the board is not permitted to look only at the public safety factor, despite every indication that the person is no longer a threat, has been rehabilitated, and has a reentry plan,” says Rayner. “Instead, they can deny a person parole if they feel their release will ‘deprecate the seriousness of their offense and undermine respect for the law.’” What that boils down to: No matter what a person has done in prison, no matter how remorseful or how many years served, their parole can be denied because of the nature of their crime.

Daryl, who began as a student in various prison programs, eventually became a facilitator, helping other individuals with their challenges, running group therapy sessions, and earning the nickname “Professor” from his fellow inmates.

Yet when he became eligible for parole, he was denied once, twice, three times, despite an immaculate record during his 31 years inside. “Each time, it was as if I was being retried for the crime I committed, no matter what I’d accomplished since,” he says.

Then, in November of 2019, a 1L student from Fordham Law School came into Daryl’s life. Sarah Acree ’22 signed up to volunteer for the Parole Preparation Project and was assigned to Daryl as a client. “I was definitely intimidated,” says Acree, now 28 and in her second year of studies. “I had never worked with an incarcerated person before.”

With the advice of Michelle Lewin and Martha Rayner, however, Acree and her two co-volunteers dove in. One thing they found invaluable were the transcripts from Daryl’s previous parole rejections. They used them to get clues about how Daryl should best approach his next parole interview, which was coming up in June of 2020. “It’s definitely helpful to go through the documents closely—you notice tiny things, like whether someone is using active or passive language, to help them better tell their story.”

Acree also had multiple meetings and phone calls with Daryl, where she offered him an opportunity to talk at length and in depth about the tough issues commissioners would raise. 

When Daryl’s parole meeting came up in June of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, he felt ready. “Before, I was focused on the details of my case and all the inaccuracies,” he says. “I wanted to set the record straight. This time, I owned up and focused on the remorse I feel,” he says. “When the commissioner asked me, ‘Do you think you’ve served enough time for what you did?’ I broke down and said, ‘Are you kidding me? There is never enough time for what I’ve done—taking a life.”

Still, Daryl walked out believing he would once again be denied parole. Instead, two weeks later, he got a letter that said that after 31 years in prison, he would finally be released. “The first thing I did was go to a public telephone and call Sarah,” he says.

Now, Daryl is sharing an apartment in Long Island and is back in touch with his long-estranged mother and brother. He is focused on his health and on advocating for others who are up for parole. “I try to be a voice to hopefully help the ones I left behind,” he says.

As for Acree, who plans to become a public defender when she graduates, she is still amazed at what the team accomplished in such a short time. “But the most wonderful thing is seeing Daryl thrive,” she says.

With the right tools—Fordham Law’s Parole Information Project and the Parole Preparation Project among them—more volunteers, law students alike Acree, and attorneys will be able to help clients like Daryl finally get home. “The more we can leverage the information we are collecting to enhance our ability to lawyer, to enhance what volunteers are doing with Parole Prep, and to help future researchers, the more we will help people who have been denied parole,” says Rayner. “That’s what appeals to me about doing this work,” she says. “We can really make a difference.”