Phooey on Lawyers… Hire NPR To Get a Quick Compassionate Release – Update for September 12, 2022 | Legal Information Services Associates LLC

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

A TALE OF TWO RELEASES

A lot of people wish they could get this kind of press. Hours after a story aired on NPR’s Morning Edition last week about CARES Act home confinee Eva Cardoza being sent back to prison for a positive marijuana test, a federal judge found “extraordinary circumstances” that called for her immediate release from FCI Danbury. “Petitioner’s family is currently experiencing a dire, urgent situation,” ruled US District Judge Sarala Nagala, citing five kids being supervised by her fiancé, who has heart disease and colon cancer.

NPR had reported that Eva was one of 230 CARES Act people released during the pandemic only to be sent back after small infractions. The BOP told NPR that 442 CARES Act people have been returned to prison. More than half allegedly violated rules about alcohol or drug use. The BOP says only 17 people out of 11,000 released were returned for committing new crimes. Ten committed drug crimes, while the rest of the charges included smuggling non-citizens, nonviolent domestic disturbance, theft, aggravated assault, and DUI.

Not everyone gets NPR-level attention. Judge Micaela Alvarez (SDTX) last month denied compassionate release to an inmate with a terminal cancer diagnosis, in part because he did not show that he “is not receiving proper medical care” and “does not claim that his cancer will go into remission if released from prison, or even that his prognosis will improve.”

Last week, Kevin Ring, president of FAMM, wrote to the judge to invite her to participate in FAMM’s #VisitAPrison campaign, to visit a prison to learn more about the living and working conditions (including access to medical care) of incarcerated people and correctional officers). Ring suggested that the inmate’s family’s “devastat[ion] at the prospect of not being with him at the end of his life” was a genuine concern. Beyond that, he described Judge Alvarez’s implication that the inmate was receiving proper medical care from the BOP as “chilling, given all we know about the substandard medical care in federal prisons, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Inspector General of the Department of Justice made disturbing findings in a 2021 audit of the Butner Federal Medical Center, where Mr. Chapa is housed. Indeed, one of the most notoriously dangerous prisons for women, is the Federal Medical Center at Carswell, is located in your home state of Texas.”