POLITICS ON THE HUDSON

Officer Gene Palmer gets 6 months for prison break

Jon Campbell
jcampbell1@gannett.com
New York State Police officers escort suspended Clinton Correctional Facility guard Gene Palmer from court in Plattsburgh Wednesday, June 24, 2015. Palmer is believed to have delivered tools inside frozen meat to two Clinton inmates before they escaped on June 6. He faces charges including promoting prison contraband and tampering with physical evidence, state police said.

ALBANY - A state corrections officer will spend six months in jail for providing tools to a pair of convicted murderers who escaped from a northern New York prison last year.

Gene Palmer, 57, pleaded guilty Monday at the Clinton County Court to two counts of promoting prison contraband -- one a felony, the other a misdemeanor -- and one count of official misconduct. County Judge Kevin Ryan sentenced him to six months in prison and ordering him to pay $5,375 in fines and surcharges.

Palmer's plea deal settles charges that he provided needle-nosed pliers, a screwdriver, paint supplies and frozen hamburger meat to David Sweat and Richard Matt, who led authorities on a three-week, headline-grabbing manhunt in June after executing an elaborate escape from the maximum-security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, Clinton County.

Matt was killed by authorities in late June, while Sweat -- serving a life sentence for the brutal 2002 murder of Broome County sheriff's deputy Kevin Tarsia -- was shot and captured days later.

"I do believe that some incarceration is clearly warranted," Ryan told Palmer in court. "While your actions may have been taken with the best of intentions, the introduction of the screwdriver and pliers into the facility had the potential to actually make the facility less safe, not more."

The meat, which was provided by fellow prison worker Joyce Mitchell, had hacksaw blades frozen inside, though Palmer denies knowing that was the case. Palmer also claimed to have provided the screwdriver and pliers to the inmates in exchange for information about illegal activity within the prison walls.

Palmer declined to speak in court. But his attorney, William Dreyer, pointed to his clean record as a corrections officer in asking Ryan for leniency.

"It is unrefuted by all of the people that have investigated this case, including the State Police and everyone up to the district attorney's office, that Mr. Palmer had no idea that he was knowingly aiding anybody to escape," Dreyer said. "The last thing he had thought of was that there would be an escape at Dannemora."

Palmer is the third person to be convicted for his role in the prison break.

Mitchell, 51, is spending up to seven years in prison for aiding Sweat and Matt. She froze the hacksaw blades in the meat, which the inmates then used to cut through their cells and into the prison pipe system, and had originally agreed to be their getaway driver, though she later bailed on the plan.

Sweat, 35, pleaded guilty in November to escape charges, though they have little practical impact: He was already serving a life sentence. Sweat is being held at the Five Points Correctional Facility in Seneca County.