We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
IT’S WHO YOU KNOW…
A few connected people did not let the ink dry on President Trump’s signature before deploying their lawyers to make hay out of the First Step Act’s modification to the compassionate release provisions of 18 USC § 3582(c)(1).
On the last Friday of 2018, a federal judge reduced former Birmingham, Alabama, mayor Larry Langford’s sentence for corruption to time served, a day after Ebony magazine reported that he was near death and being denied release. He had served a little more than half of a 15-year sentence for bribery and corruption, but the family and friends in Congress were able to convince the U.S. Attorney and BOP to move for his compassionate release.
U.S. District Court Judge Scott Coogler ordered that Langford “shall be released from the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons as soon as his medical condition permits, the release plan is implemented, and travel arrangements can be made.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for Annette Bongiorno, Bernie Madoff’s former secretary, raced into court a day after First Step became law to ask her judge to order the BOP to send her to home confinement on March 19, the day on which she will have served two-thirds of her sentence. Not content to have the BOP process her Elderly Offender Home Detention program request (probably a wise idea), her lawyers want Judge Laura Taylor Swain – who is already on record favoring Bongiorno’s home confinement – to tell the BOP to get it done.
The government has not yet weighed in on Bongiorno’s request, which was picked up in the national media as soon as it was filed (no doubt because the defendant’s lawyers made sure of the publicity.)
The Birmingham News, Larry Langford will be freed after sentence reduction (Dec. 28)
ABC News, Bernie Madoff’s secretary wants to use new Trump law to get out of jail early (Dec. 25)
United States v. Bongiorno, Case No. 10-cr-228, Letter Motion (Dec. 22)
– Thomas L. Root