We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
BREAKING RECORDS
The Federal Bureau of Prisons maintained its streak, ending last week with a record-breaking 9,020 active inmate COVID cases. This is 17% higher than the previous worst week ever for COVID, when the BOP reported 7,690 sick inmates 56 weeks ago, on December 28, 2020 .
Last week’s total was 48% higher than the week before. At the same time, 1,432 BOP staff are down with COVID, a 52% increase over a week ago. Two more inmate deaths have been reported officially, two women, ages 30 and 59, at FPC Alderson.
The worst COVID conditions as of Friday were Yazoo City Medium (664 cases); Carswell (316 cases); and Herlong, Lompoc, Berlin, Yazoo City USP, Loretto, Los Angeles MDC and Marianna, all with more than 200 cases. Another 21 facilities reported between 100 and 200 cases.
The timing couldn’t be worse for the BOP’s pending motion in the class-action suit over its handling of COVID at Lompoc. Last Tuesday, the federal judge hearing the BOP’s motion to dissolve a July 14, 2020, preliminary injunction – that ordered the release of vulnerable inmates to home confinement – ruled that two facility reports by Dr. Homer Venters, a court-appointed infectious disease expert were admissible in the case.
The reports based on inspections in September 2020 and April 2021, were strenuosly objected to by the BOP. The judge held that the reports “have sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness, are more probative regarding the conditions at Lompoc than other evidence.”
The court asked Dr. Venters for an update on conditions at Lompoc, just as a local newspaper reported that 294 Lompoc inmates had COVID.
“Having found Dr. Venters’ reports are admissible, the court finds a more recent report from [him] regarding the current conditions at Lompoc is needed prior to ruling on respondents’ motion for summary judgment and motion to dissolve [the preliminary injunction],” the Court said.
Despite complaints to the Attorney General by Sens Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, and Rep Jahana Hayes (all D-CT) over what they described as “highly disturbing” reports that FCI Danbury was not following COVID-19 isolation guidelines, conditions “appear to have improved little” at the facility, according to allegations by BOP staff and a lawyer involved in an inmate COVID lawsuit there. The News-Times reported that about 80 inmates — some allegedly at higher risk — had been relocated in Danbury’s auditorium, and staff is “still not being provided appropriate personal protective equipment, according to Sarah Russell, director of the Legal Clinic at Quinnipiac University School of Law and a Quinnipiac law professor.”
The News-Times said the BOP responded that the agency follows CDC guidance, “the same as community doctors and hospitals, with regard to quarantine and medical isolation procedures, along with providing appropriate treatment.”
The CDC reported last Friday that Pfizer and Moderna vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization from Covid-19 omicron was 81% from two weeks until about 6 months after dose two, 59% after six months after dose two and 90% at least two weeks after a booster dose. The report issued the same day an federal court in Houston halted President Biden’s federal employee vaccine mandate.
This means that the 30% of BOP employees who have so far ignored the mandate when it was in place are unlikely to get a vaccine now that it’s gone away.
Not that vaccinations matter in the real world that much. As of last Friday, the BOP reports it has fully inoculated 1,511 Carswell inmates (despite Carswell only having a population of 1,296). Yet 312 inmates have COVID.
Santa Maria Times, 294 Lompoc federal prison inmates, staff test positive for COVID-19 (January 21, 2022)
Order, Torres v. Milusnic, Case No. CV 20-4450 (C.D. Cal. January 18, 2022)
Wall Street Journal, Third Dose of Pfizer, Moderna Covid-19 Vaccines Offers Strong Protection Against Omicron (January 21, 2022)
Feds for Medical Freedom v. Biden, Case No. 3:21-cv-356, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11145 (S.D. Tex, January 21, 2022)
BOP COVID webpage (January 23, 2022)
News-Times, Reports from FCI Danbury show little change since legislators call for change (January 16, 2022)
– Thomas L. Root