Cellblock Albany, N.Y., features tales from elected officials

Down the hall came Inmate No. 78764-053, a man diminished by the loss of the $2,500 suit and the $800 shoes he had just been forced to exchange for a jumpsuit, following a guard to his cell.

First night in federal prison, and he was already headed to solitary confinement, his case too notorious for him to mingle safely with the others. He remembers the cell being clammy and dark. It made him think of Rikers Island, where his father had been held after being arrested when Pedro was 11. But this was a few grades higher: the Metropolitan Detention Center, in Brooklyn, a windowless cage looming over the East River.

From the next cell came a voice, pricking him out of his numbness:

“Hey, Espada! Hang in there. You’re the senator, right?” the voice said. “My mother voted for you.”

Senator, he was: Pedro Espada Jr., once the third-most powerful man in New York state. And “senator” he remains — even today, three years into a five-year sentence for stealing money from a nonprofit.

There are a lot of “senators” in America’s federal prisons these days. In May, three more corrupt New York state lawmakers are expected to join the jump-suited ranks, three more cautionary tales from a state Legislature with no apparent shortage of them.

There is Sheldon Silver, a Democrat and former Assembly speaker, who was convicted of abusing his office in return for nearly $4 million in kickbacks. There is Dean G. Skelos, a Republican and former Senate majority leader, who was found guilty of selling official favors for payments and jobs for his son. Convicted last fall in overlapping trials that sent Albany into upheaval, the two men are to be sentenced within 10 days of each other in May, with Silver’s sentencing scheduled first, on Tuesday.

And then there is John L. Sampson, all but eclipsed by the convictions of Silver and Skelos, who led the Senate Democrats for three and a half years. Sampson was convicted last year of trying to thwart an investigation into allegations that he had embezzled state funds. He is to be sentenced on May 19.

With the expected arrivals of Skelos, Silver and Sampson, there will be at least nine former members of the New York state Legislature in the federal prison system. Nine more were released over the last few years. One, facing terminal cancer, is under house arrest. Another died in prison.

Outside, their names are synonymous with scandal. Inside, they command a measure of respect.

“I have a title for life,” said Efrain Gonzalez Jr., a Democrat and former state senator from the Bronx who was convicted in 2009 and spent almost six years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey, before being released in February. “I introduced myself as Efrain. But they called me senator.”

Of Skelos and Silver, Espada said, “Anybody that would want to put them in jail for 10 or 15 years should spend a weekend in here and think whether that’s necessary. It wouldn’t pay back the people they harmed.”

He avoided addressing the victims of his own crimes. Espada, a Democrat, was convicted in 2012 of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit health care clinics he ran in his Bronx district when he was a state senator. He spent the spoils on sushi, parties, spa treatments and a Bentley. Then he got caught.

In the years since, there have been 16 months of no daylight and no fresh air, and before that nearly a year of not seeing his family. And before that, a 10-week stint in solitary confinement after he stepped over the property line at the Federal Correctional Institution in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, one of three prisons where he has spent the last three years. All in all, a thorough humiliation.

“I know that I was too consumed with the search for personal power,” he said. “I know that I was too consumed with materialistic things.” He gestured at his khaki jumpsuit, his shiny white sneakers. “Now, I don’t miss any of that,” he said. “I’m used to living on $300 a month.”

His time at Schuylkill overlapped briefly with that of Larry B. Seabrook, a former city councilman from the Bronx who is serving five years for corruption. But neither felt much like talking shop.

“This is our new existence,” Espada said. “We’re thinking about how to fit in.”

If they have one thing in common, these Albany alumni, it is this: They refuse to be expunged from the rolls of the innocent.

“It doesn’t weigh on me that there’s this opinion of me, because it’s not true,” said William F. Boyland Jr., a Democrat who represented part of Brooklyn in the Assembly. He is serving a 14-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, after being convicted of bribery in 2014.

It is a recurring theme.

“I don’t have that thing where I’m a criminal, so I’m smiling,” said Gonzalez, who spent much of a four-hour interview at his Bronx apartment outlining, in baroque detail, all the ways he said he had been railroaded by prosecutors, the judge and even his own lawyer.

“I did not steal money from Soundview or from anybody,” said Espada, referring to the health care network he ran. He had not received a fair trial, he said; he would have continued to contest the charges had he not run out of resources and the will to subject his family to what he described as further pain.

In this season of high-profile corruption cases, few phrases have dominated discourse in the State Capitol like ethics reform. Yet Boyland, Espada and Gonzalez had little to say on the subject. If anything, they suggested, they and their colleagues had been punished simply for doing things the Albany way.

“I wouldn’t say they were crooks. Everybody does all that,” Gonzalez said of Skelos and Silver. “It’s, ‘I help you, you help me.’ So what is that? Politics.”

Boyland was asked if he would endorse any of the reforms his former colleagues have discussed this session, including closing a campaign-finance loophole and banning outside income for legislators.

He smiled.

“I can’t endorse anything now,” he said.