NY’s Oldest Inmate, 89, Denied Parole

By MICHAEL HILL

ALBANY, N.Y. – The oldest inmate in the New York state prison system was denied parole a week after his 89th birthday. Charles Friedgood was a well-to-do Long Island heart surgeon convicted in 1976 of injecting his ailing wife Sophie with a fatal dose of the painkiller Demerol.

He was arrested at Kennedy International Airport as he was trying to flee the country with more than $450,000 in cash, securities and valuables from his wife’s estate to be with his girlfriend in Europe.

A parole board that met with him Tuesday determined his release would undermine respect for the law and be "incompatible with the welfare of society."

It was not clear what Friedgood told the board because a transcript of the hearing was not immediately available. But the board, in a decision released Wednesday, said "it is very clear you continue to attempt to manipulate the board with ambiguous, carefully crafted and evasive answers."

In a recent jailhouse interview with The New York Times, Friedgood maintained that he had no intent to kill his wife, who had been ill since a stroke. He also told the newspaper: "If you don’t want to be with a woman anymore, you divorce. You know, you don’t have to resort to murder. So 32 years later, I begin to realize how stupid you can do things."

Friedgood was sentenced in 1977 to 25 years to life in prison and is being held at Woodbourne state prison in the Hudson Valley.

He had been rejected for parole four times before. A board in 2003 said he had a "propensity for extreme violence." A state appeals court later criticized that board’s "irrational" conclusion about Friedgood, who has terminal cancer and wears a colostomy bag.

Some of Friedgood’s children had supported his release, as had a former prosecutor who put him behind bars.

John Queenan, an attorney for Friedgood, would not comment on the board’s decision because he had not seen it. But he said Friedgood’s positive prison record and his medical condition merit his release.

"Obviously, he’s just getting older day by day," he said.

Friedgood, who turned 89 on Oct. 3, is scheduled to appear before a parole board again in March 2009.

As New York’s oldest inmate, Friedgood is symbolic of a prison population getting older as health care improves, baby boomers age and inmates get hit with longer sentences due to tough-on-crime laws like the Rockefeller drug laws.

Inmates 50 and over accounted for 3 percent of New York’s prison population two decades ago, compared to 11 percent last year.