CRIME
Has New York Yet Embraced Rehabilitation or Mercy?
Gay man who killed estranged partner at 23 is not eligible for parole until he turns 73
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
At a 2004 symposium titled
“Catholics and the
Death Penalty: Lawyers,
Jurors & Judges”
held at Fordham University,
Charles Hynes, then Brooklyn’s
district attorney and a professed
opponent of the death penalty,
cited three cases when explaining
why he sought to kill 11 people under
New York’s now-defunct death
penalty law. For the district attorney,
Darrel Harris, Jerry Bonton,
and Michael Shane Hale stood out
as murderers who deserved death
because they “did not consider for
a moment the mercy asked and
pleaded for by the victims.”
Later in the symposium, Hynes,
a devout Catholic, singled out Hale,
now 48 and a gay man who has
lived more than half of his life in
prison, for harsh comments when
discussing the role that mercy
should have in the criminal justice
system.
“But I have no mercy for someone
who kills the way Michael
Shane Hale killed,” said Hynes who
died in 2019. “I think he should be
locked up in a hole for the rest of
his life. I think he should be held
without any communication with
any other human being for ending
the life of another person, that his
life should be over. So I can fi nd no
mercy for those kind of people.”
New York’s most recent experience
with the death penalty lasted
from 1995, when then Governor
George Pataki signed a death penalty
statute into law, to 2004 when
the Court of Appeals, the state’s
highest bench, effectively struck
down the statute. Pataki, a Republican
who was governor from
1995 through 2006, promised to
reinstate the death penalty in New
York during his fi rst campaign in
1994.
Over nine years, prosecutors
in every county weighed bringing
death penalty cases in 864 homicides,
but fi led death notices with
state courts and the Capital Defender
Offi ce (CDO), the agency
created by the death penalty law
Michael Shane Hale speaks to Gay City News in Sing Sing prison in November.
to represent death-eligible defendants,
just 57 times. Pataki, who
did not respond to an email seeking
comment, applied pressure on
prosecutors in 1996 when he removed
Robert Johnson, then the
Bronx district attorney, from the
prosecution of Angel Diaz who was
accused of killing Kevin Gillespie,
a police offi cer, because he found
Johnson insuffi ciently zealous in
pursuing the death penalty. Diaz
committed suicide in jail and was
never prosecuted.
Hale was arrested in 1995 for
the murder of Stefen Tanner, a
62-year-old man. Hale, then 23,
had an on-again, off-again relationship
with Tanner beginning in
1992. After graduating from high
school in rural Kentucky in 1990,
Hale held a few jobs, but eventually
left for New York City where he
could be openly gay. In Kentucky,
he endured “prejudice, isolation,
and emotional cruelty based on
his sexual orientation,” according
to a 1999 document prepared
by the CDO. Showing his desire
to fl ee that state, Hale pawned a
necklace to buy gas for his car on
his trip to the city, he said during a
recent two-hour interview in Sing
Sing prison where he is currently
incarcerated. After surgery forced
Hale to leave a job in the city, Hale
turned to hustling to earn money.
A client gave his number to Tanner,
who contacted Hale.
“He ended up calling me later,”
Hale said. “He ended up taking me
out to dinner.”
That began a fraught relationship.
Hale described Tanner as
appreciative and abusive, forthright
and manipulative, but mostly
controlling. After Hale returned to
work, Tanner required that Hale
sign over his paychecks to him
and dictated how Hale dressed, he
said. Hale ended the relationship
in 1993 and returned to Kentucky.
Tanner pursued the younger
man. The 1999 CDO document
notes that Tanner made “numerous
calls” to Hale, including “more
than sixty during one fi ve-month
period.” In September of 1995,
DUNCAN OSBORNE
Hale returned to New York City
and Tanner.
On October 14, 1995, the two
men had an argument in Tanner’s
Sheepshead Bay apartment that
was “loud enough for the neighbors
to hear,” a detective in the NYPD’s
Missing Persons Squad told LGNY,
now Gay City News, in a 1996 interview.
In court fi lings and other
records, police and the district attorney’s
offi ce characterized the
dispute between Hale and Tanner
as “violent” — though it was never
clear if they were referring to what
happened in the apartment, the
second fi ght that occurred later in
the apartment building’s parking
garage, or both.
In the apartment, Tanner called
911 and told the operator he was
being robbed by a white male with
a knife. When police arrived, they
found no robbery and no knife. It
was a “clothes job,” or a task in
which they are required to supervise
the distribution of possessions
➤ HALE, continued on p.5
December 31, 2020 - January 13, 2 4 021 | GayCityNews.com
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