A New York parole board has granted parole to the state’s longest-serving inmate in the state’s prison system.
James Moore pled guilty to 1st degree murder after 14-year-old Pamela Moss of Penfield was raped and murdered in 1962.
Moore had agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison to avoid the death penalty, an arrangement Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley said the victim’s family agreed to so that they would be assured that Moore would never live outside of prison again.
But a decade later, Doorley said that changes in state law allowed him to go before the Parole Board, which he has done more than 20 times before being granted parole recently.
In a statement released Tuesday, Doorley noted that according to Moore's confession, the last thing that Moss said was "please..."
“For years, my predecessors, District Attorney Howard Relin and District Attorney Michael Green, and I have vehemently opposed the release of James Moore. We have kept the community informed of his upcoming parole interviews and even circulated petitions in our community to provide a voice to the Parole Board. I am deeply saddened by this news. It is a disservice to Pamela’s family,” Doorley said.
The New York State Dept. of Corrections and Community Supervision said that the 88-year-old Moore appeared before the Board of Parole on April 27, and was granted an open date with an earliest release date of June 6.
The state agency said at this time, Moore does not yet have an approved residence.
An organization called ‘Release Aging People in Prison Campaign’ put out a statement on Tuesday saying that while it can’t speak to the specifics of every case, “the purpose of parole is to evaluate a person’s readiness to return back to their community based on who they are today, not to add layers of punishment on top of a person’s sentence.”
The director of that group, Jose Saldana, said his organization supports any decision to release those who pose no threat to public safety.”
