Clemency Reform Discussion Accelerates:
by Derek Gilna
The Biden Presidency is slightly more than a month old, and his attorney general designate, Merrick Garland, has yet to be confirmed, but there is mounting pressure on Biden to use his clemency power boldly to help reverse mass incarceration. The ACLU has encouraged him to release 25,000 federal prisoners with the stroke a pen, although of course, it is not all that simple. Less than 15,000 applications for clemency are currently on the books. To accomplish that, Biden would have to have a team in place in all federal law enforcement agencies, and it would require at least the minimal cooperation of the federal prisoner prison system to carry it out.
This would probably
require a change of DOJ prison "leadership,." based upon its botched
response to COVID-19. Although COVID
counts in the country have plunged,
certain prisons, like
The DOJ website says that 50,000 doses of the vaccines have been delivered, but although it does not specify if those were given to the thousands of employees or to prisoners; we know the truth. Most of what has been given prisoners are doses rejected by the guards, who are not required to take them. Of course, these same guards are then more likely to reintroduce the virus back into the prison, along with the new transferees and self-surrenders.
DOJ also fails to screen prisoners to see which patients would have adverse reactions to any vaccine, while often forcing prisoners to sign release forms before they get vaccinated, without first permitting them to read them. This goes on daily, especially in the hardest-hit institutions, who are not ready for the next wave of reinfections or new viruses currently making the rounds in general public.
It is hard
not to be saddened and sickened by the news coming from
On a brighter note, there are multiple pieces of legislation pending that would markedly improve prisoners' resentencing/release options, including the MORE Act, which de-schedules marijuana, and the Safer Detention Act, for over 60 prisoners, which would increase home confinement (currently known as the Elderly Home Detention Pilot Program). Also, the most recent COVID relief bill has passed only the House, but not the Senate, and still has not been signed into law.
In the Fourth Circuit, the case of In re: Dearnta Lavon Thomas, 19-292, (2-23-20), the appeals court granted authorization to file a successive 2255 motion based upon Davis, the court holding Davis now applies retroactively on collateral review, and and agreed that the filing stated a plausible crime of violence claim "that warrants further exploration by the district court." In the 5th Circuit, in US v Nora, 18-31078, (2-24-21), the court vacated a medical health care fraud conspiracy conviction, finding insufficient evidence, and turned on the definition of what was a willful violation of the anti-kickback laws, stating that "evidence of (defendant's) knowledge was lacking."
Be not afraid, and let not your heart be troubled.
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