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

MAN BITES DOG

Other than Judge Aileen Cannon (who just yesterday decided that the MAGAverse could know all about government witnesses who are already getting death threats in the Mar-A-Lago documents case), federal judges hardly ever draw media criticism. Judges rage at people, but people hardly ever rage back.

A Cincinnati TV station, however, has done just that. WCPO-TV blasted Southern District of Ohio Judge Timothy Black for “neglecting his criminal cases, keeping a dead person on his docket, and ignoring inmates who filed emergency motions for release during the COVID-19 pandemic for several years.”

The station has reported that Judge Black “ignored motions filed by many inmates with health problems who urgently asked for release from prison during the peak of the pandemic, for as long as three years.” When the TV station pressed the judge for answers about the delay, Judge Black “finally took action in the days before and after Christmas 2023, denying motions from 15 defendants. Some motions were so old, that they had become moot because the Bureau of Prisons had already released inmates months or years prior.”

“The reason it’s called compassionate release is because there’s an immediacy to it. Addressing the immediate need three years later, is just wrong,” said attorney Jay Clark. “There is no timetable, no time limit, no deadline that the judges have to meet, but there has to be some measure of reason.”

WCPO-TV, ‘I simply cannot wait any longer. I am dying’: Inmate waits 3+ years for judge to rule on COVID early release (January 26, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root