Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney stood before cameras Friday and rattled off a list of names no New Yorker should have to hear twice: Joel Rifkin, Colin Ferguson, Payton Gendron, Rex Heuermann. Serial killers. Mass shooters. Men who tortured, dismembered, and livestreamed murder. Under four criminal justice bills now before the New York state legislature, Tierney warned, some of the state's most notorious convicts could eventually petition for release, and the families of their victims would be forced to relive the worst moments of their lives, again and again, at parole hearings with no end in sight.
The Friday news briefing, organized by Suffolk County officials, put a sharp point on a fight that has been simmering in Albany. Tierney and Suffolk County Executive Edward Romaine, both Republicans, joined Theresa Bliss, whose 25-year-old son David was killed outside a Port Jefferson pizzeria in 2021, to lay out what they described as the real-world consequences of legislation dressed up in the language of reform.
As Fox News Digital reported, the four proposals, the Earned Time Act, the Fair and Timely Parole Act, Elder Parole, and the Second Look Act, would, taken together, slash prison sentences, strip the parole board of its ability to weigh the severity of a crime, create a new elder-parole pathway for inmates over 55, and let felons file unlimited petitions for sentence reductions before different judges. Critics say the combined effect would gut life-without-parole sentences and push thousands of violent offenders back onto New York streets.
The details matter, because the titles don't tell you much. One bill would cut every sentence shorter than life in prison by half, retroactively. It would also prevent prison assaults and stabbings from being deducted from an inmate's good-behavior credits. Tierney said the retroactive reduction alone would "result in the immediate release of thousands of New York's most dangerous inmates."
A second bill would bar the state parole board from considering the nature of the original crime when deciding whether to grant parole. Think about that for a moment. The board that exists to weigh whether a convict is safe to return to the community would be prohibited from examining what the convict did to get locked up in the first place. Tierney told Fox News Digital that the measure specifically benefits murderers and rapists.
"It turns parole upside down, it prohibits consideration of the seriousness of the crime and even the defendant's remorse or lack of it."
That was Tierney's assessment. If a killer shows zero remorse, the parole board would be told to look the other way.
A third bill would import a California-style elder parole system into New York, but critics say the Empire State version goes further. It would apply to inmates older than 55 who have served at least 15 years of a sentence, including life sentences. In practice, Suffolk County officials warned, this would abolish life without parole even for serial killers, cop killers, and racially motivated mass murderers.
The fourth bill hands felons the right to petition a judge for a sentence reduction. The judge hearing the petition cannot be the same one who imposed the original sentence. And there is no cap on the number or frequency of petitions. If one judge says no, the inmate can immediately file again with a different judge, and keep filing.
Suffolk County officials did not argue in the abstract. They named names.
Joel Rifkin murdered between nine and 17 women. Colin Ferguson killed six people and wounded 19 on the Long Island Rail Road. Payton Gendron, the white supremacist gunman, livestreamed his attack at a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, killing 10. Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan sentenced Gendron on February 15, 2023, to life in prison without parole for domestic terrorism motivated by hate and each of the 10 counts of first-degree murder.
Under the elder parole proposal, once Gendron turns 55, he would become eligible for a parole hearing. Tierney laid out the grim math for the families of Gendron's victims.
"Once [Gendron] turns 55, every two years those families are going to have to go through the parole process again. Why?"
That single word, "Why?", hung in the air at the briefing. No lawmaker pushing these bills has provided a public answer that Suffolk County officials found satisfying.
Then there is Rex Heuermann. Days before the Friday briefing, Tierney secured a guilty plea from the Long Island serial killer, who admitted to torturing and killing eight women. On April 8, 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y., to murdering seven women and admitted to an eighth killing. He is expected to be sentenced in June. Under the proposed legislation, even Heuermann could eventually seek parole or a sentence reduction.
Theresa Bliss spoke at the briefing not as a politician but as a mother. Her son David, 25, was killed in 2021 outside a pizzeria in Port Jefferson after an argument with strangers. The man who shot him received 40 years to life in prison. Under the proposed sentence-reduction bill, that term could be cut in half. Under the elder parole provision, the killer could petition for release at 55 after serving 15 years.
Bliss addressed her remarks directly to the lawmakers behind the bills:
"I have a question for every New York lawmaker pushing the Earned Time Act, Fair and Timely Parole Act, Elder Parole and Second Look Act, does our pain mean anything to you?"
"How do you fight so aggressively for the early release of murderers, yet dismiss the families whose lives were shattered?"
Her final line landed hardest:
"When you pass laws that prioritize criminals over victims, you're not reforming the system, you're erasing us."
No lawmaker has publicly responded to Bliss. Fox News Digital reached out to Governor Kathy Hochul's office for comment; no response was included in reporting.
The Friday broadside was not Tierney's first clash with Albany's criminal justice establishment. He has been a frequent critic of the state's bail reform laws. Earlier this month, he sidestepped New York's sanctuary laws to ensure Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took custody of a Guatemalan man accused of raping a child. Hochul, for her part, signed the Clean Slate Act in Brooklyn on November 16, 2023, a law that automatically seals certain criminal records, which critics viewed as another step in the same soft-on-crime direction.
The pattern is familiar. Albany passes legislation with titles that sound like good-government reform. The Earned Time Act. The Fair and Timely Parole Act. The Second Look Act. Each name suggests balance, mercy, efficiency. But when you read the mechanics, retroactive sentence cuts, parole boards barred from weighing the crime itself, unlimited do-over petitions before fresh judges, the effect is something else entirely.
Tierney put it plainly:
"While these bills are often framed as reforms and have innocuous titles, in reality, they will push thousands of New York's most violent criminals out onto our streets."
He added:
"These people are where they are because they richly deserve it. Every second of whatever sentence they receive, they've earned."
Suffolk County Executive Edward Romaine framed the stakes without hedging:
"These bills are an insult to every law-abiding citizen, the law enforcement community and especially the victims of these crimes. Use common sense and do not pass these bills."
The bill numbers, sponsors, and current legislative status remain unclear from available reporting. What is clear is the direction. New York's legislature is weighing a package of measures that would, if enacted, fundamentally reshape how the state handles its most violent offenders, not by toughening standards, but by dismantling the mechanisms that keep serial killers, mass shooters, and rapists behind bars for the duration of their sentences.
The people who would bear the consequences are not the lawmakers voting in Albany. They are the families who already buried someone. They are the communities where these offenders would be released. They are the law enforcement officers who put the cases together in the first place. And they are the future victims whose names we do not yet know.
Tierney described the convicts these bills would benefit as "an infinitesimal, small percentage of our population who create an inordinately large amount of all of the problems, all the violence, all of the theft and everything else." A tiny fraction of the population, but the fraction responsible for the greatest harm.
Reform is a word that should mean making a system work better. In Albany, it increasingly means making the system work better for the people it was built to restrain.
