An Upstate New York correctional officer has pleaded guilty on Monday regarding allegations that he helped two convicts escape from a maximum security prison in 2015. He has been sentenced to six months behind bars and has to pay $5,000 in fines.
According to Toronto Sun, the correctional officer has been identified as Gene Palmer. He admitted that he gave a screwdriver and pliers to two inmates who managed to escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in June 2015. Palmer has pleaded guilty to two counts of promoting prison contraband, one of which is a felony, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor.
It has been originally requested that Palmer should be sentenced to more than one year in prison but a judge handling the case said that the officer's 28 years of "unblemished service" as well as his cooperation with the state inspector general's investigation wer taken into consideration.
The tools were reportedly smuggled to inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt. The gears were hidden in frozen meat that was provided by another prison employee, Joyce Mitchell. Mitchell was sentenced last year to two years and four months up to seven years in prison. Palmer said that he originally thought the inmates just asked for the tools so as to make it easier for them to cook in their cells, ABC News reported.
Palmer reportedly allowed the inmates to enter passageways behind prison cell walls making them able to plan their escape. The inmates cut through a steel wall and slithered through a steam pipe. They were able to emerge from a manhole on the street outside the prison. Palmer said he helped the inmates in exchange for "priceless" information, which keeps corrections officers safe inside the prison.
The manhunt for the two escapees lasted for three weeks last year, The New York Daily News reported, where Matt was fatally shot by a federal agent. Sweat, on the other hand, was captured two days later. He has been back to prison since being recaptured and has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for the escape on top of the life sentence he is serving for killing a law enforcement officer.
Palmer, who has since been suspended from his job after the investigation on the case started, was already asked to resign from the facility.
