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

LIAR, LIAR

A judge last week ordered the MDC Brooklyn medical director to appear in court to explain why the BOP didn’t give an inmate all his medication after an emergency appendectomy and then apparently lied to the man’s lawyers that he had gotten all of the required doses (and then for good measure, threw him in the SHU for spurious reasons).

US District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall set a hearing for May 23rd after she grilled a BOP attorney during a status conference last week, repeatedly asking which BOP official “lied” that a detainee was given all five days of his antibiotic regimen. The medicine had been ordered by outside surgeons after the pretrial inmate received an emergency appendectomy that almost didn’t happen.

The order came after the detainee’s lawyers told the Court that their client’s “appendix may well have ruptured because MDC staff ignored his initial complaints; he was forced to recover from surgery without the aid of painkillers; and he is now being deprived of his antibiotics, which he must finish to avoid potential infection. Further, it appears that [the detainee] was sent to the SHU in retaliation for his reasonable demands for his medication and efforts to get counsel to assist him, and that the MDC revised the SHU ticket after the fact to justify its actions.”

NY Daily News, Judge Demands Answers From Brooklyn Federal Jail Officials Over Inmates Medical Woes (May 6, 2024)

Emergency Motion (Dkt. 330), United States v. Ricketts, Case No 22-cr-106 (EDNY)

– Thomas L. Root