Happy Father's Day and Juneteenth; EQUAL Act Negotiations Continue; Keys to Sentence Relief; Prison Conditions Deteriorate, While White House Dithers, Congress Takes Action; "Right To Trial" Act Introduced; COVID Update
by Derek Gilna, Director of Research
With the holidays of Father's Day and Juneteenth occurring this week, our attention is focused on providing the research necessary to ensure you celebrate these holidays next year at your home. Although it may be hard to discern from your current perspective, there are many more avenues to relief than four short years ago, and the odds of sentence relief will only increase as the Sentencing Commission restarts its work.
The federal criminal justice system does an efficient job of arresting, prosecuting, and imprisoning tens of thousands people every year. Despite that fact, crime continues, and rises and falls without any apparent relationship to the number of arrests. The reason is clear; it does not exist to reduce or even deter crime, but to highlight federal dominance and power. Federal criminal justice agencies are overly political, haughty, and disrespectful of basic human rights, and actually despise each other. Until the late 60's the federal prison population was 50,000, for actual federal crimes. .
The first key to relief is the First Step Act (FSA), which empowers federal judges to take a "second look" in many more instances than the "second successive" 2255 filing (which is still useful in some factual circumstances.). Second is the 2255 petition, alleging inadequate representation of counsel (currently at epidemic levels) which must be filed within a year of the end of your direct appeal or petition for cert. After that is the often-misused 2241, which can be used to enforce your sentence credits, wrongfully withheld by the prisons to people with higher security levels. We get a lot of inquiries about people's PATTERN classifications. (Note: it is of MINIMAL importance to sentence relief, although important for prison assignments and transfers.)
Compassionate releases continue to be granted. Thanks to you and your family's efforts, Congress is well aware of the prison system's dysfunction. Serious EQUAL Act negotiations are continuing. Two key congressmen made waves in the marijuana community on Thursday by disclosing that there are high-level talks underway about putting together a wide-ranging package of incremental marijuana proposals that House and Senate lawmakers believe could be enacted into law this year.
And, in a
touch of irony, there is renewed focus on the deplorable conditions of
confinement in your prisons, thanks to focus on the hot light of publicity on
the health plight of pre-trial January 6, 2021 detainees in various federal
facilities, consistent with what you deal with on a daily basis. A Jan. 6
prisoner who was released by a federal judge after being denied cancer
treatment for eight months is now “in dire straights,” according to his
girlfriend. On
In this environment of heightened scrutiny comes some new Congressional action. U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (IN-05) introduced the bipartisan ‘Right to Trial Act’ with her colleagues, including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), among others. This legislation would strengthen the constitutional right to trial and mitigate abuses of prosecutorial authority in our federal justice system.
The key provisions amend the sentencing instructions of 3553 to order to (1) instruct judges to consider "the need to protect the constitutional right to a trial, including by prohibiting impairment of such a right in any case in which an increased sentence is threatened or imposed based on a defendant’s decision to go to trial and not accept a plea offer," and (2) authorize judges "to impose a sentence below a level established by statute as a minimum sentence so as to protect the constitutional right to trial." If this passes, this will be yet another weapon to reduce sentences.
Congress is
also aware that COVID has not yet left federal prisons. Congress is well aware
that when sanitation inspectors visit
correctional kitchens, they find coolers smeared with blood and sinks without
soap—and still give passing grades. Medical licensure boards permit suspended
(or disgraced) doctors to practice (sometimes with ankle monitors) —but only on
incarcerated people. Constitutional law does not fill the gap, treating
standards like a threshold for toxic particulates or the requirements of a fire
code more as a safe harbor than a floor. Disgraceful. Free-World Law Behind
Bars
Yale Law Journal, Vol. 131, No. 1385, 2022, UCLA School of
Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 22-18, 2022, by Aaron Littman, 3-1-22.
Prisoners
in multiple prisons are forced to drink unsafe drinking water, and often cannot
buy bottled water or purified substitutes:
From Waseca (but it could be Gilmer, Aliceville, or a number of places):
"The water here has impacted so many.
There are more and more showing up with kidney stones... the water here
is why so MANY have renal, high b.p. and renal calculi due to the high
concentrations of brine. Fatigue, joint
pain, flank pain, poor output, etc.
Horrid fatigue.
More
evidence that heavily-funded "rehabilitation" programs are not being
provided, despite millions of dollars being spent (where?). From Coleman:
" There has been an interesting setback in ...rehabilitation at Coleman
low. The administration of the Low has
come up with the idea that the unit libraries ...needed to be purged. The claim is that contraband (phones, dope,
usual stuff like that) was being stored in some of the books. The solution is top deprive us of access to
common use books/magazines and the like.
Covid status as RED precludes access to the institutional library (and)
means we have lost access to reading material other than whatever each of us
has on hand."Otisville is also code Red, with complaints about black mold.
There is
also more COVID in Lexington Camp, and no adherence to CDC guidelines: "They have not even mass tested and we
are a three story dorm environment where positives came from all
ranges.....high risk inmates are being put at risk even more." Especially
since COVID has never gone away, and is far from under control, epidemiologists
say, and the virus is sickening and sidelining people from work or social
events as it continues to spread. “People can’t come to work. People are
short-staffed,” said Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at
the University of South Florida College of Public Health. “Covid-19 is still
inflicting enough damage.”
The
From
Ashland camp: "our RDAP unit had 19 cases of a unknown rash that went to
quarantine but then it ended up within a week of that 30 more was taking to
quarantine and they tell us what it isn't but not what it is. We have barely
any staff left and our camp is being ran by office and kitchen staff as guards.
What is really going on? We have been out of paper towels for over a week and
some feminine products. We are a stand alone camp that seem to be folding by
poor management We have no Doctor but one on Video on occasion. No Dentist and
a lot of inmates who need one."
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Be not afraid, and let not your heart be troubled. Derek Gilna, Director of Research, JD, (De Paul Law School
, 1975), MARJ, (
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