Benjamin Smalls

Photograph of Benjamin (2nd from left) with three of his childhood friends at Green Haven Correctional in 2019, obtained from New York Daily News.

Benjamin Smalls passed away on May 5, 2020 at Vassar Brothers Medical Center after a three-week-long battle with COVID-19. He was 72 years old and contracted the virus at Green Haven Correctional Facility, where he had been incarcerated since 1999. “At least he wasn’t in jail when he passed away,” said his daughter, Jhana DuPont, in an interview with the Yale Daily News. “He said to me, ‘I have a window I can look out of, that’s better than being in my cell.’”

Benjamin, known as Mr. Smalls or “The Elder Statesman” by those in Green Haven, was a respected member of the leadership board of Project for A Calculated Transition (PACT). PACT, run entirely by incarcerated individuals, organizes a series of courses inviting men in the prison to talk about forgiveness and personal growth. PACT also sustains a 40-year long relationship with Yale Law School in which volunteers from YLS visit the prison once every two weeks to participate in reading groups facilitated by PACT members. 

During these conversations, Benjamin was a natural leader. With his pair of gold-plated glasses from the 70s, Benjamin frequently guided the group through uncomfortable conversation topics and asked questions to make sure everyone was on the same page. Devin Race, a YLS volunteer, said that Benjamin “viewed himself as a sort of guiding figure to others, but at the same time, he was very humble about everything he had to learn and wanted to examine his own beliefs.”

In addition to his work with PACT, Benjamin also served as a legal advocate and a clerk in the prison’s law library. With the paralegal certificate he obtained from New York University in 1978, Benjamin helped hundreds of men file appeals and request transfers or file requests related to visitation. Students at Yale Law School say they learned from Benjamin, whose cell was so overstuffed with legal documents that prison officials regularly ordered him to clear it out. 

“Mr. Smalls was a brilliant litigator,” said Jose Saldana, the director of Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP), who befriended Benjamin while they were incarcerated together and later fought for Benjamin’s clemency. “He could have done what so many other people do, just focusing entirely on winning his own freedom. He may have compromised that somewhat by wanting to help others … that defines who he was as a human being.”

Photograph of Benjamin Smalls with his daughter Jhana DuPont, obtained from New York Daily News.

Photograph of Benjamin with law students from Yale Law School, who he worked with as part of his role in PACT, obtained from New York Daily News.

Benjamin was known as a community-minded person long before he was incarcerated. He graduated in the first class of Mount Vernon High School in 1965 and later dropped out of college in order to help his mother provide for his sisters’ education. He became a licensed real estate agent and worked in the financial district.

Later, he found his groove as a small business owner, focusing on providing jobs for local youth in his neighborhoods. He opened a deli, a seafood takeout restaurant, a production company, a publishing company, a private club in Harlem, and a cabaret in the Bronx. 

“All the restaurants and all the stores … it wasn’t so much that he wanted a restaurant, he wanted a store, it was more that he wanted something he could make sure the local people could work at,” DuPont said.

At the time of his death, Benjamin had applications for clemency and medical parole pending, but neither was granted by the Governor’s office. Advocates who worked on his case are frustrated by what they call an indecent and shameful response from Governor Cuomo, especially considering that Benjamin had a vast support network of grassroots organizations, Yale Law School students and professors, and friends and family on the outside all fighting for his release. 

“It’s a tragedy that Mr. Smalls wasn’t released and that he died in prison,” Devin said. “I think that his life, and the life of his family, and the world more broadly would have been enriched if he had been able to live outside of prison walls.”

Photograph of Benjamin and his daughter Jhana DuPont, obtained from The New York Times.

This memorial was written by MOL team member Andrew Kornfeld, based on his reporting for the Yale Daily News with Ella Goldblum and Meera Shoaib. 

Messages and Memories

“Missing my beloved pen pall for over thirty years.”

Barbara Blakeney