By TANDY LAU / NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS
Last month, Greg Mingo, a formerly incarcerated activist, was enlisted to advocate for Morris Grady, who, at age 71, was serving a sentence in Ulster County’s Eastern Correctional Facility. He immediately agreed to pen a letter, but Grady died a day later. “[His wife] asked me Thursday, and he passed away Friday,” recalled Mingo.
COVID-19 renewed public attention on incarcerated elders, given the pandemic’s disproportionate risk for seniors and the underreported spread in New York State prisons. Advocates pointed to such conditions when they successfully pushed then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021 to grant clemency to Mingo, who is now 73. The Harlemite long maintained his innocence while serving out what criminal justice reformers call “death by incarceration.” …