Sheldon Silver, who was for years one of the most powerful politicians in the state before he was taken down by a corruption conviction, spent his last days struggling to get out of his prison bed while his wife was barred from visiting him as he lay dying.
Silver lost nearly 60 pounds over the last six months of his life before he passed away from cardiac arrest inside Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, Massachusetts on Jan. 24, 2022, according to his Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) file THE CITY obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. He was 77 years old.
Prison medical staff transferred him from the Federal Medical Center Devens, also in Ayer, on Jan. 14, 2022 to Nashoba after he exhibited “altered mental status changes,” records show.
The move came after the former Lower East Side political powerbroker spent weeks confined to a bed while suffering debilitating back pain and severe diarrhea, the documents reveal.
Even a politically influential Jewish criminal reform advocacy group was unable to assist as he became so weak he relied on fellow prisoners who doubled as health aides while confined to a bed.
“What happened with Shelly Silver was absolutely tragic and wrong,” said Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, president of Tzedek Association, which was the lead advocate for multiple people who were granted clemency in the last days of the Trump administration.
“Whatever anyone will say about Shelly, it is indisputable that he did not deserve a death sentence,” he added.
Tzedek desperately tried to get him released to home confinement under the CARES Act, which was passed during the pandemic. The association raised money on his behalf and hired attorney James Loonam, a former federal prosecutor, to plead his case. They paid him $150,000, according to Margaretten.
But Loonam was unable to convince the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, which prosecuted Silver, according to Margaretten. Loonam declined to comment.
In the community hospital, doctors intubated Silver after his oxygen level dropped, the documents reveal.
But prison medical staff told Silver’s wife, Rosa, she couldn’t visit him there because the hospital at the time only allowed guests of patients in “end of life situations,” prison medical records show.
He died four days later.
‘It Doesn’t Need to Happen Like That’
While at the peak of his powers Silver was able to single handedly torpedo massive projects like the West Side stadium envisioned to help lure the Olympics.
But in the months before his death, he wasn’t able to convince federal prosecutors or the judge overseeing his case, Valerie Caproni, to temporarily let him out as part of a mass release during the pandemic.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Congress passed the CARES Act which permitted the BOP to transfer over 13,000 nonviolent offenders who were potentially vulnerable to COVID-19 to home confinement.
A year later, in May 2021, Silver, who was suffering from a host of medical ailments, was let out of prison for two days under that program. The decision was made after the warden of Ottisville Correctional Facitly, the minimum security prison where he was housed at the time, recommended that he be released based on his poor health.
Silver insisted on spending the first night at home “in his own bed” in Lower Manhattan according to a person familiar with his case.
But the next day he was driven to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights by friends and family.
“He was really, really sick,” Margaretten said.
Still, federal prosecutors opposed his release, according to the person involved in his behind-the-scenes appeal.
“He was released and returned because of political pressure,” Margaretten charged.
Lauren Scarff, a spokesperson for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damien Williams, declined comment.
After two days out, he was moved directly from Columbia Presbyterian to FMC Devers, described online as an “administrative security federal medical center” — basically a prison hospital.
His medical condition steadily declined once back in custody, the FOIA records show.
Silver’s official prison file was heavily redacted with all the names of his doctors removed.
But it shows that before he was sent to Nashoba hospital, he was unable to get out of bed even to use the bathroom. His mobility was limited by a fractured back he apparently suffered because of severe osteoporosis, the documents state.
At one point, he listed his pain as “12” on a scale of one through 10, the records show.
The documents show Silver’s wife was periodically updated on his status, but was not allowed to visit him in his last days. She did not respond to requests for comment.
His family decided against seeking a formal compassionate release because that process typically drags on for at least a few months, Margaretten said.
Silver’s poor health should have made him an excellent candidate for compassionate release, according to one leading advocate.
“It doesn’t need to happen like that,” said Mary Price, general counsel with Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit that works toward a “more fair and effective justice system.”
His sudden transfer back to prison after two days out also “raises a lot of questions,” she added, noting most prisoners under similar circumstances were allowed to stay out longer.
When a prisoner is near the end of their life or suffering from serious medical ailments, like Silver, the BOP is supposed to notify their defense attorney and immediate family, according to provisions in the First Step Act, prison reform legislation signed into law by former President Donald Trump in December 2018.
The BOP can also file a motion with the judge handling the case to ask for compassionate release, according to the federal law.
But that rarely happens, according to Price.
“The BOP hasn’t had a good track record of doing those things,” she said.
During the pandemic, some 4,500 people were granted compassionate release by the courts. But only 1% of those were because of motions filed by the BOP, Price said, noting the majority were filed by prisoners themselves.
Also, the overwhelming majority of compassionate release requests from people in federal prisons are denied, according to federal data. The rejection rate is typically at least 80% since September, the data posted online shows.
As for Silver, he clung to his faith as an Orthodox Jew while locked up, the documents reveal.
He regularly attended religious services and at one point refused to be showered on Saturday, the Jewish day of rest. In one case, exasperated medical staff looked up the laws of sabbath and insisted that allowing them to clean him up would not violate the stringent rules because it was a health matter.
In another example, Silver refused to complete a written section of a mental health evaluation because it was the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, records show.
As for his last day, doctors in Nashoba hospital removed his breathing tube after his condition appeared to improve, documents reveal.
But Silver went into cardiac arrest several hours later and doctors were unable to revive him, the medical file states.
A BOP spokesperson denied Silver’s wife was barred from visiting — and simultaneously blamed the Nashoba facility.
THE CITY shared the agency’s internal document stating that Rosa Silver could not visit her husband at the hospital.
In response, BOP spokesperson Donald Murphy stated: “There is no evidence to suggest” that she was blocked.
“The information you provided demonstrates FMC Devens’ visiting procedures were communicated to the appropriate individuals while he was at an outside hospital,” he added.
Silver’s final days are not uncommon, according to prison activists and experts, who have long decried an aging population.
In 2015, the BOP issued a report “examining the impact” of people in its custody 50 and older.
The report found that so-called “aging images” cost an average of $24,538 to incarcerate, 8% more than the average cost of $22,676 to incarcerate younger people.
Additionally, the review concluded that BOP facilities don’t have “appropriate staffing levels to address the needs of aging inmates, and they provide limited training for this purpose.”
Some facilities, like Devers where Silver was housed, rely on healthy incarcerated people to work as de facto health aides, the report noted.
At the time, the BOP only employed 36 social workers for nearly 165,000 sentenced people.
The prison population over the age of 55, nationally, has grown by 280% between 1999 and 2016, according to a Pew report.
“There are a large number of people dying behind bars who don’t need to,” said Nishi Kumar, head of Medical-Legal Projects at the Medical Justice Alliance, a nonprofit which assists incarcerated people across the country apply for compassionate release or medical parole.
The BOP doesn’t list online how many people die in its custody each year, according to academics who specialize in the issue and prisoner-rights groups.
“There’s very little visibility,” Kumar said.
Patients like Silver and their family members aren’t typically able to view their own medical records, she added.
“That’s a huge problem,” she said, “it’s very hard to monitor diagnoses and treatment plans or advocate for yourself or a loved one.”
Ups and Downs
Silver’s death was the end to a years-long court battle over his case and push for an early release and presidential pardon.
In January 2015, Silver, who was first elected to the New York State Assembly in 1976, was arrested and charged with taking close to $4 million in payments in exchange for political favors on behalf of Dr. Robert N. Taub, a cancer researcher, and two real-estate developers.
Silver, who’d gone from being the son of a hardware store owner to one of the most feared politicians in New York, was convicted on all seven counts against him eight months later.
Caproni, the judge in his case, initially sentenced him to 12 years in prison.
But the case was overturned on appeal after the Supreme Court limited the legal definition of corruption in a separate Virginia case.
He was retried in 2018 and convicted again — and sentenced to seven years in prison. In 2019, he once again successfully appealed one portion of his conviction, which slightly reduced his prison sentence.
But he begged the judge to keep him out, citing his poor health.
“Your honor, I do not want to die in prison,” Silver wrote to Caproni.
She cited his corruption conviction and ruled that a non-jail sentence would not be “appropriate.”
Earlier this week, Kevin Ring, who directs state and federal criminal justice advocacy for Arnold Ventures (which is also a funder of THE CITY), said it was particularly galling that Silver’s wife was unable to visit him at the end.
“What’s happening here? What’s the public safety component of this?” asked Ring, who did time himself in federal prison for his role in the Jack Abramoff corruption case.
“What would be the harm to the public?” he added. “This seems unnecessarily cruel and not connected at all to public safety.”