Police1 Staff Report
(TRENTON, N.J.) -- The New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered the release of Thomas Trantino, the longest-serving inmate in the state, who has spent 37 years behind bars for the 1963 murders of two Lodi police officers. Andrew Voto, the former Lodi police chief and brother of one of the slain officers, told the New York Post that “the court has never seemed to care.” Trantino and another man gunned down Peter Voto and Gary Tedesco when the officers came to the Lodi bar where they were celebrating a robbery. “This guy should have died 30 years ago but that doesn’t matter now,” Voto said. “All that matters is that one day soon he’ll be free to kill again.” The high court found that the parole board disregarded evidence favoring Trantino in the most recent ruling denying him parole. In an opinion released Thursday, the court said that the state must follow the law, however great officials’ contempt must be for a convict. Under the ruling, Trantino, 62, must spend a year in a half-way house and will remain on parole for the rest of his life. A recent New Jersey law imposes an automatic sentence of life with no parole or on all killers of police officers who do not receive the death penalty. Trantino was originally sentenced to death but won a life sentence when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned all existing capital punishment laws. Under the law in force in 1963, he first became eligible for parole in 1979 but was turned down nine times. During his years in prison, Trantino wrote a book and a New York gallery exhibited his pictures. His lawyers over the years have argued that his record as an inmate has been good and that he has been fully rehabilitated.