Decades Later, State Seeks Release of Report on Attica Uprising

More than 40 years after an uprising at Attica left 43 people dead, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman is planning to ask a judge to make public a trove of investigatory findings that have been hidden from public view for decades.

A group called the Forgotten Victims of Attica, made up of prison employees who survived the inmate rebellion and the recapture of the prison, as well as relatives of those who did not survive, has urged the state for more than a decade to seek the release of the records.

Mr. Schneiderman, whose office holds the records but has been barred by a decades-old court order from releasing them, said on Friday that he would seek a judge's permission to release the entirety of what is known as the Meyer report, a 570-page review of the state's retaking of the prison in 1971.

"The time has come to bring transparency to one of New York State government's darkest chapters," Mr. Schneiderman said.

The office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday that it would also support an effort to make the records public, and Mr. Schneiderman's office said it believed the passage of time had made moot the concerns that prevented the records' earlier release.

The Meyer report is a review of the events that began Sept. 9, 1971, when inmates at the Attica Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in western New York, took dozens of correction officers and civilian employees hostage. Four days later, under a cloud of tear gas, the State Police and correction officers waged an assault to recapture the prison.

A vast majority of the casualties at Attica came from gunfire in the raid — 29 inmates and 10 prison employees were killed and scores were wounded in the assault — and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller's decision to approve the storming of the prison has been debated ever since. (Inmates were found to have killed one guard and three fellow inmates during the uprising.)

The Meyer report was prepared by a former State Supreme Court justice, Bernard S. Meyer, who later became a judge on the state's top court, the Court of Appeals.

Judge Meyer found that "serious errors of judgment" were made in the investigation of the riot and the retaking of the prison, although he added that there had been "no intentional cover-up" by the state.

Only the first of the three volumes of the report, submitted in 1975, was ultimately made public. The other volumes relied heavily on grand jury testimony, and although Gov. Hugh L. Carey directed the state attorney general at the time to seek their release, a State Supreme Court justice ordered in 1981 that they be permanently sealed.

The Forgotten Victims of Attica organization was formed in 2000 after the state agreed to pay $8 million to inmates who were beaten during the raid. In 2005, the state agreed to a separate $12 million settlement with the surviving prison employees and the families of those who died, but it did not agree to two of the organization's other requests, for a public apology from the state and the release of records, including the Meyer report.

"The records are a way to answer a lot of unanswered questions for these families, and these are questions they've carried for decades in their hearts and their minds," said Jonathan E. Gradess, a lawyer who has represented the group along with Gary A. Horton.

Mr. Gradess added: "There are people who have questions as simple as, 'Who was the last person to see my father alive?' "

Dee Quinn Miller, whose father, William Quinn, was a correction officer who was killed during the uprising, said the release of the documents was important to the affected families.

"It means so much to all of us," Ms. Miller said. She added, "We have grown up in the aftermath of Attica and we have lived the lies that have been perpetuated for all these years. We believe that in those records lies the truth."

The Forgotten Victims of Attica asked Mr. Schneiderman, who took office in 2011, to seek the release of the records.

In 2011, Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Queens Democrat who was then the leader of the Assembly's Correction Committee, asked Mr. Schneiderman's office to take steps to seek the release of the Meyer report.

Mr. Aubry on Friday praised Mr. Schneiderman for taking action. He suggested the unreleased contents of the report would be of interest not only to survivors and their families, but also to historians and students of criminal justice policy.

"There have always been the lingering questions about certain aspects of who gave orders, what those orders were, how the cover-ups were promulgated," Mr. Aubry said, adding, "We have tried to get attorneys general in the past years to do this, and so Eric has been the first to step up and take this issue on."

Lawyers in Mr. Schneiderman's office worked on the issue for more than a year, according to aides, and circulated a memorandum in February that detailed a legal strategy for permitting the release of the records.

Mr. Schneiderman said he and his staff members were "in the process of evaluating what mode, timing and mechanics of release will best balance a number of imperatives," like enabling public access while also respecting the grand jury process.

Earlier this month, when Mr. Cuomo met with the editorial board of The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, he was asked if he would help press for the release of the records. The governor, himself a former attorney general, said then that his lawyers were looking into it.

On Friday, his counsel, Mylan L. Denerstein, wrote to Mr. Schneiderman's office, recommending "a new course of action to try and get them released to the public."

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