If Gov. Hochul is in the gift-giving mood this holiday season, she might consider packaging a pardon for a lifelong New Yorker who has paid for his crime a dozen times over.
Last year, an immigration judge ordered Pascal Charpentier deported to Haiti based on a decades-old conviction and the unjust allegation that he’s not a U.S. citizen.
But Charpentier, who lives in Queens Village, is not from Haiti, and has never set foot in the country.
In 1972, Charpentier was born to a U.S. military family on a U.S. military base in Germany during the Vietnam War. He and his family returned to New York when the boy was just 3 months old. His parents have Haitian roots.
The deportation order stems from an arrest that occurred when Charpentier was a teen.
At 18, Charpentier was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in the notorious 1990 murder of a Utah tourist who was stabbed to death in a Manhattan subway station.
The victim, Brian Watkins, 22, was trying to protect his mother when six robbers set upon them on the platform of the subway station at W. 53rd St. and Seventh Ave. in Midtown.
Watkins was stabbed in the chest with a 4-inch knife, and later died.
The crime outraged New Yorkers, and highlighted a city that was out of control.
Charpentier, according to his defense, was just a lookout, and was unaware that any violence was about to occur. But New York’s felony murder law makes no distinction between intent and culpability, and Charpentier and six co-defendants were each sentenced to 25 years to life.
Charpentier, now 51, served 24½ years of that sentence and earned early release because of his good behavior.
Fast-forward to 2020, when ICE agents arrested him on July 6, two days after Independence Day, and held him for more than seven months in detention.
A parole board report shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision that Charpentier was a U.S. citizen, something Pascal and his family had always believed.
But, now, ICE alleges that because Charpentier has been convicted of an aggravated felony, he is subject to mandatory deportation.
“My family and I never had reason to believe I was anything other than an American citizen,” Charpentier said. “It wasn’t until the Trump administration expanded their deportation machine that I was rousted from my home and held in a county jail for over seven months. I still have an electronic monitor on my ankle even though I’m fighting deportation to stay here.”
While in prison in the Watkins murder, Charpentier earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree and certification in peer counseling. After his release, he founded a nonprofit organization that helps at-risk youth, and met a nurse to whom he is engaged.
Charpentier has appealed the deportation decision, but faces a lengthy court battle and the possibility of being separated forever from the only place he has ever called home.
“No one deserves to be separated from their family, from their community, and from the place that they love,” Socheatta Meng, a co-coordinator of the Clemency Coalition of New York, said last week at a rally outside Hochul’s Midtown office. “With the stroke of her pen, Gov. Hochul can change all this.”
As the rally was winding down, Charpentier’s ankle monitor began beeping. It was nothing more than a low battery, but it was another stark reminder of Charpentier’s plight.
That’s where Hochul comes in. A gift-wrapped pardon would end the legal drama and give Charpentier a truly happy holiday.
Gov. Hochul could halt Haiti deportation of Queens U.S. citizen over 1990 tourist slaying: LEONARD GREENE
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18.12.2023
If Gov. Hochul is in the gift-giving mood this holiday season, she might consider packaging a pardon for a lifelong New Yorker who has paid for his crime a dozen times over.
Last year, an immigration judge ordered Pascal Charpentier deported to Haiti based on a decades-old conviction and the unjust allegation that he’s not a U.S. citizen.
But Charpentier, who lives in Queens Village, is not from Haiti, and has never set foot in the country.
In 1972, Charpentier was born to a U.S. military family on a U.S. military base in Germany during the Vietnam War. He and his family returned to New York when the boy was just 3 months old. His parents have Haitian roots.
The deportation order stems from an arrest that occurred when Charpentier was a teen.
At 18, Charpentier was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in the notorious 1990 murder of a Utah tourist who was........
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