PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. — Joyce Mitchell, the prison worker who helped two murderers escape from a maximum security facility last year, is asking to be released from prison.

Mitchell, who who was a civilian supervisor in the prison tailor shop, was convicted of smuggling hacksaw blades hidden in packages of frozen hamburger meat for inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat. 

Mitchell was also supposed to be the pair’s getaway driver, but she panicked and did not show up when they emerged from a manhole near the prison. Matt and Sweat’s escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility in June of 2015 led to a massive, costly three-week manhunt. 

Matt was shot and killed on June 26, and Sweat was shot and captured two days later.

Mitchell, who is now serving two and a third to seven years for her part in the escape, hand wrote a three-page letter to New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Acting Commissioner Anthony J. Annucci in April asking for clemency.

The Plattsburgh Press-Republican recently obtained a copy of her letter.

“I was wondering if there was anything you could do to help me to possibly getting clemency,” Mitchell wrote from her cell at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. “I realize what I did was very wrong. No one will ever know the remorse I feel for everything that happened due to my part in the Clinton escape.”

Mitchell said in the letter that Matt and Sweat threatened to kill her husband, Lyle, who also worked in the tailor shop, as well as her son and her mother.

Mr. Mitchell did not respond to calls from the Press-Republican seeking comment.

“I could not let them harm my family. I love my family very much and they mean everything to me,” she wrote. “No one knows how scared I was.”

Mrs. Mitchell wrote that Matt was a very powerful inmate who had relationships with correction officers who granted him favors. She said Matt also had control over other inmates and that he had arranged for someone on the outside to kill her family.

“I know I did wrong. I tried to help and no one knows there was a person on the outside that was going to kill my husband,” she wrote. “I am really not a bad person. I made bad choices. My family is my life and I could not let anything happen to them.”

In her letter, Mitchell, now 52, begs Annucci to consider clemency, citing her clean record prior to the escape.

“I know I really don’t have the right to ask for clemency. I am in hopes that you can help me and see your way in helping me be granted clemency,” she wrote. “I have admitted to everything I did. I know I should have told someone, but I was afraid the inmates would kill my husband, son and my mother.”

Mrs. Mitchell said she knows there is no excuse for her actions and that she will never be able to forgive herself.

“I have lost so much. I have lost my freedom, my dignity, my job, my friends. Luckily, I still have what is most important to me, my husband and family,” she wrote. “Please understand the person I was at the time was someone very scared for their family. Unfortunately I got in over my head and I didn’t know what to do.”

Annucci actually can’t grant clemency; that would be up to the governor. Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie, who prosecuted Mitchell, said he would not favor clemency for her.

“I would strongly request the Executive Clemency Bureau to decline making any favorable recommendation to Governor Cuomo for clemency,” he told the Press-Republican after reading Mrs. Mitchell’s letter. “I would further recommend to Governor Cuomo that he continue to hold Joyce Mitchell accountable for the havoc, trauma and controversy that she caused by assisting Matt and Sweat with their escape.

“Without Joyce Mitchell’s assistance, Matt and Sweat would not have been able to accomplish their real-life ‘Shawshank Redemption’ escape from Clinton Correctional Facility.” 

Wylie added that Mitchell accepted a plea offer in the case and agreed to the sentence.

“It is the people’s recommendation that Joyce Mitchell serve the maximum prison sentence available and that the governor hold her accountable to that,” he said.

LoTemplio writes for the Plattsburgh, New York Press-Republican.