No, Ir's Not Your Imagination: Nationwide Prisoner COVID Numbers Reach New High;
Some Good News: New Stimulus Passed; First Step Act Reach Expanded in Sixth Circuit
by Derek Gilna
As the nation prepares for a most unusual holiday season, there is some good news to report. Congress agreed on a new Stimulus bill which will include direct $600 payments to individuals. I will report on the exact language when available, and whether prisoners will also benefit, and how you can still get the first stimulus payment.
New COVID cases in the nation's prisons this week reached their highest level since testing began in the spring, far outstripping previous peaks in April and August. No federal facility has been spared, as hot spots have flared, abated, and flared again, with DOJ continuing to undercount cases. The pandemic has laid bare the utter inability of the federal prison system to fulfill its most basic responsibility of protecting those over whom it wields the power of life or death, and that often coldly denies basic medical care. Whatever its virus management "plan," was, staff was never trained to execute it.
How does one deal with this onslaught of indignities and suffering? We know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope, and rewards persistence. Grace and forgiveness arm you mentally to move forward..
Of the 10,000 federal compassionate release requests, wardens denied all but 156 (2%) of them. District courts, after an initial spurt of relief, have been so swamped with filings that most struggle to even docket them in a timely fashion. Nonetheless, there continues to be relief granted, and a slow trickle of DOJ CARES releases, and an unprecedented flood of mainstream media interest in prisoner conditions, which have focused on the immorality and inhumanity of current conditions.
Biden still has not put forth an AG candidate, although Merrick Garland, Doug Jones, Deval Patrick, and Sally Yates have been mentioned. Since all of the other cabinet picks so far have generally been non-progressives, will he appoint an "intuitionalists," like Judge Garland, former prosecutors like Jones (and former senator, or former Acting AG Yates, or a Patrick (a former civil-rights lawyer, and former Governor of Massachusetts)? Whomever it is, it will be an indication of whether Biden will keep his promise to eliminate mandatory minimums and to cut the prison population.
A Sixth Circuit panel in US v. Henry, No. 19-2445 (6th Cir. Dec 18, 2020), ruled that FSA's reduced sentencing terms are applicable in resentencing: "the legislative history of the First Step Act demonstrates Congress’s intent to remedy overly punitive mandatory-minimum sentences faced by defendants, including defendants resentenced after the Act’s enactment." Will Congress extend that relief retroactively? Are prisoner Pell grants on the immediate horizon.?
Fear not, and Let not your heart be troubled.
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