As you know, last September the BOP changed its email system to make mass emailing of this newsletter impossible.

This is a copy of the newsletter for March 31, 2025. I have reformatted it to eliminate graphics so everything printed in black will fit into a Corrlinks email (if you are providing it to an inmate).

LISA Newsletter for March 31, 2025 – Trouble on the Line

LISA publishes a free newsletter sent to inmate subscribers in the Federal system. Due to BOP Corrlinks limitations, the newsletter must be sent in small batches throughout the week.

Edited by Thomas L Root, MA JD

Vol 11, No 13

<><>

Cotton Introduces Bill to Jam Cell Phones
How Do I Love Thee?
Let Me Count the Ways…
Trump Grants Clemency to Six
5th Circuit Upholds Felon-In-Possession As-Applied Constitutionality

<><>

COTTON INTRODUCES BILL TO JAM CELL PHONES

Sen Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rep David Kustoff (R-TN) have introduced bills in the House and Senate to permit prisons to use jamming devices to block prisoners from using contraband cell phones.

The Republican lawmakers are reintroducing identical legislation in their respective chambers of Congress that would amend Sec 302a(a) of the Communications Act of 1934 – which lets the Federal Communications Commission regulate devices that “cause harmful interference to radio communications” – to prohibit the FCC from banning cell phone jammers used in prison housing units.

Currently, the FCC says, “The Communications Act prohibits non-Federal entities from using cell jammers. The FCC cannot waive this statutory prohibition absent a change in the law by Congress.” The Cotton-Kustoff bill is intended to solve this problem, stating that the FCC “prevent a State or Federal correctional facility from operating a jamming system within the correctional facility to prevent, jam, or otherwise interfere with a wireless communication that is sent” by a contraband cell phone.

In announcing the bill, Cotton argued that “[f]or far too long, contraband cellphones have been a major security threat in our prisons, allowing criminals to coordinate crimes from behind bars. This legislation is a common-sense step to cut off their ability to threaten witnesses, organize drug trafficking, and endanger law-abiding citizens from within prison walls.”

While there are instances of such crimes, the numbers pale next to cellphones’ real utility, to let prisoners get past telephone time and availability limitations on communications with friends and family.

Walter Pavlo has described the phenomenon:

The risk of possessing and using a cell phone is something many prisoners wrestle with when they are in prison, but it is also a symptom of other problems in prison. It begs the question as to why prisoners take the extraordinary risk of having a cell phone. Federal prisoners are subject to lockdowns in prison where they are confined to their cells and not allowed to use sanctioned methods of communication like monitored calls and emails (Corrlinks, the prison email system, tracks and reads email messages)… During lockdowns there is no television, no phone, no email and no visitation. In this isolation, prisoners long for some communication with the outside world, to talk to their family, to get some news, and to have some entertainment in stark confines of prison. The cell phones offer an escape from prison.

Cell phone jamming unit prices currently range from about a hundred to several thousand dollars a unit.

While it is difficult to gauge the likelihood that the bill will pass, there is unlikely to be much opposition to the program. The FCC has traditionally opposed any change in the law that permits the use of devices intended to jam telecommunications, but this is now a different FCC, so its position (not to mention its influence with legislators) is unknown.

Newsbreak, Prisons could use cellphone jamming systems under bill in Congress (March 27, 2025)

Press Release, Cotton, Kustoff Introduce Bill to Keep Cellphones Out of Jails (March 26, 2025)

Forbes, Federal Prisoner’s Dilemma, Cell Phone or Not (June 7, 2024)
<><>

HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous sonnet comes to mind…

A female Bureau of Prisons nurse at FMC Rochester was indicted last week for abusive sexual conduct with an inmate.

Officials say that the staffer “engaged in a romantic relationship with an inmate.” The relationship included the exchange of explicit letters and an intimate encounter in a shower room.

After the interlude in the shower, other staff nurses reported the relationship. When investigators found the intimate letters and “confronted [the nurse] about her relationship with the inmate, she submitted a report where she allegedly falsely accused the inmate of sexual assault. She also claimed that he had threatened to hurt her children if she refused him or reported his assault.”

The BOP placed the nurse on administrative leave, whereupon she drove from Iowa to Ohio to “mail a ‘love letter’ to the inmate, who had already been transferred.”

KMSP-TV, Rochester prison nurse had affair with inmate, exchanged letters: Indictment (Mar 28)
<><>

LET ME COUNT THE WAYS…

More on the sonnet…

While Elizabeth Browning Barrett was serving a 168-month sentence for drug offenses, Guidelines Amendment 821 took effect. The amendment limited the impact of criminal history “status points” that had been used to calculate Liz’s original Guideline range. Relying on Amendment 821, she moved for a sentence reduction to 120 months.

The government agreed Liz was eligible for a retroactive sentence reduction under 18 USC 3582(c)(2) but not to the level she sought. Liz argued that Amendment 821 both reduced her criminal history points from three to one (putting her in Crim History Category I) but also entitled her to a reduction in her offense level because she was now eligible for the 2D1.1(b)(17) 2-level safety valve reduction allowed for qualified defendants with only one criminal history point.

The government believed Amendment 821 should be applied only to Liz’s criminal history category, letting the court cut her sentence no lower than 150 months. The district court agreed and reduced Liz’s sentence to 150 months rather than the 120 months she had requested.

Liz argued to the 4th Circuit that the district court was wrong not to give retroactive effect to Amendment 821. Last week, the 4th agreed.

To qualify for the safety valve, Liz could have no more than one criminal history point (this has increased since she was sentenced, but Liz was stuck with the Guidelines that applied on her sentencing date). But she also had to meet requirements of no violence in her case, no gun, no leadership role, and other standards listed in Guideline 5C1.2(a)(1). Because she had too many criminal history points, the district court did not bother to make any other safety valve findings.

The district court believed it lacked the authority to make any new factual findings on an Amendment 821 resentencing. But the 4th held that nothing prevents the court [in a 3582(c)(2) proceeding] from making new findings that are supported by the record and not inconsistent with the findings made in the original sentencing determination.”

The appeals court said, “We appreciate the government’s point that a defendant’s criminal history category and her offense level are separate calculations under the Guidelines, serving separate purposes. For that reason, a retroactive change to one ordinarily will not affect the other. But this appears to be an unusual case, in that the Guidelines closely and directly connect the two, tying a defendant’s criminal history score under 4A1.1 to both her criminal history category and her qualification for a two-level offense adjustment under 2D1.1(b)(17). Where an amendment has this kind of direct impact on two provisions integral to a defendant’s “amended guideline range,” see U.S.S.G. 1B1.10(b)(1), retroactive application of that amendment means accounting for both.

US v Barrett, Case No 24-6293, 2025 USAppLEXIS 7111 (4th Cir, Mar 27, 2025)
<><>

TRUMP GRANTS CLEMENCY TO SIX

Last Friday, Trump pardoned Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola, who had been convicted of defrauding investors last year and was soon to begin a 4-year sentence.

Trump said Milton, who with his wife contributed $1.8 million to Trump’s re-election campaign last fall, was prosecuted because “he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president.” Trump said. He said Milton “did nothing wrong” and that the Southern District of New York’s prosecutors were “a vicious group of people.”

Trump also commuted the sentence of Ozy Media and its founder Carlos Watson on Friday, just hours before Watson was due to begin serving a 116-month term for at FCI Lompoc.

Ozy had falsely claimed to have deals with Google and Oprah Winfrey to lure investors into putting $60 million into the company.

On Thursday, Trump granted pardons to three founders of the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange – Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed – who pled guilty in 2022 to one count each of violating the Bank Secrecy Act for flouting money laundering rules and failing to police the exchange, according to USA Today.

Hayes was sentenced in May 2022 to two years of probation, with the first six months in home detention. Delo was sentenced in June 2022 to 30 months of probation. Reed was sentenced in July 2022 to 18 months of probation.

Finally, last Tuesday Trump pardoned Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of conspiracy to defraud a Native American tribe. Archer, sentenced to a year in 2022, became a key figure in a congressional inquiry into the Biden family businesses, telling lawmakers behind closed doors that the younger Biden sold the “illusion of access” to his father. Then-President Joe Biden.

Trump said Archer was treated “very unfairly.”

AP, Convicted of bilking investors, Nikola founder and Trump donor gets a presidential pardon (Mar 28)

CNBC, Trump commutes sentence of Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson just before prison surrender (Mar 28)

USA Today, Trump pardons three founders of BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange convicted of money laundering (Mar 28)

AP, President Trump pardons former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer (Mar 25)
<><>

5th CIRCUIT UPHOLDS FELON-IN-POSSESSION AS-APPLIED CONSTITUTIONALITY

The 5th Circuit last week upheld the constitutionality of 18 USC 921(g)(1)’s felon-in-possession statute as applied to Terry Schnee, a defendant with a prior aggravated battery conviction.

The Circuit compared the battery conviction to colonial-era “armed and affray” laws and ruled that the 2nd Amendment permits disarming people like Terry.

The 5th Circuit said Terry’s “violent aggravated battery conviction is analogous to, and arguably more dangerous than, the ‘prototypical affray [which] involved fighting in public,’ the precursor to the ‘going armed’ laws punishable by arms forfeiture… These affray and going armed laws were intended to “mitigate demonstrated threats of physical violence similar to that displayed by Terry when he perpetrated the aggravated battery offense [and] supports a tradition of disarming individuals like [Terry] pursuant to 922(g)(1), whose underlying conviction stemmed from the threat and commission of violence.”

The 5th’s approach continues to suggest that those with nonviolent felonies in their background cannot be held subject to the felon-in-possession statute consistent with the 2nd Amendment.

US v Schnur, Case No 23-60621, 2025 USAppLEXIS 7030 (5th Cir. Mar 26, 2025)
<><>

BOP EMPLOYEES TAKE IT ON THE CHIN (AGAIN)

Last Monday, 23,000 BOP employees lost their retention bonuses, reducing their pay by up to 25 pct. On Thursday, Trump stripped the BOP employees, along with thousands of other federal workers, of the right to collective bargaining.

As Walter Pavlo described it in Forbes last week, “[d]espite already ranking last among federal agencies in employee satisfaction, morale [at the BOP] has worsened. President Trump’s recent aims to eliminate BOP employees’ ability to unionize [is] a move condemned by AFGE Council 33 President Everett Kelley as a “disgraceful and retaliatory attack” on civil servants. Compounding this frustration, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly pressured staff to resign, while long hours and severe shortages persist. The likelihood of mass resignations only increases instability within the agency.”

Executive Order, Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs (Mar 27)

Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Is ‘Rudderless’ Operation, Says Former Director (Mar 28)
<><>

The LISA Newsletter is copyright 2025, LISA Foundation, PO Box 636, Norwalk OH 44857.

The newsletter uses pseudonyms for any inmates named in cases we report on.

Your family may read our newsletter online (or print it to send it to you by snail mail) at www.lisa-legalinfo.com.

PLEASE SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER.