We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

IS COMPASSIONATE RELEASE THE SLEEPER STAR OF FIRST STEP?

Ohio State law professor Doug Berman, whom I cite often, wrote in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog last week that he “considers the statutory changes to the so-called compassionate release provisions in federal law to be the ‘sleeper provisions’ of the First Step Act,” chiefly because for the first time, inmates may ask their sentencing courts directly for compassionate release (18 USC 3582(c)(1)) if the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not act within 30 days, or if – after going through the BOP’s administrative remedy process – the inmate is denied.

Since the BOP usually takes four months plus to grant compassionate release in the rare cases the agency did so, this provision is important. Maybe no more will die like Steve Cheatham did. Sick with cancer, he filed for compassionate release on Dec. 13. The BOP denied receiving it until Jan. 11. Desperate to get him home, Steve’s lawyer filed with Steve’s sentencing judge on Jan. 30. The court granted compassionate release the next day. Before Steve could be told the news that afternoon, he died at FMC Butner.

Prof. Berman hopes that the kind of failure seen in Steve’s case will end, and that compassionate release will become a tool to reduce mass incarceration. He wrote that

more than 5000 federal prisoners are in ‘care level’ 3 or 4 facilities… As the [Dept. of Justice Inspector General] explained to the USSC in his testimony three years ago, beyond the humanitarian value of allowing ill persons to receive treatment outside of prison facilities, releasing ill prisoners helps ‘reduce overcrowding in the federal prison system” and can “result in cost savings for the BOP” and in turn the federal taxpayer.

Even if we imagine only 10% of elderly and ill federal inmates are suitable candidates for compassionate release, we still could be looking at a means for releasing many thousands of federal prisoners in relatively short order.

Sentencing Law and Policy, Compassionate release after FIRST STEP: Should many thousands of ill and elderly federal inmates now be seeking reduced imprisonment in court? (Feb. 18)

New York Times, A New Law Made Him a ‘Free Man on Paper,’ but He Died Behind Bars (Feb. 15)

– Thomas L. Root