- Factsheet: The COVID-19 Crises in Federal Detention (9/9/20)
By Federal Sentencing Resource Counsel
The public health crisis in our federal prisons and jails is only getting worse. An updated factsheet prepared by Sentencing Resource Counsel includes links to sources and highlights that COVID-19 is ripping through Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and infecting incarcerated individuals, at a mortality rate 2 times higher than the general population. It also sheds light on DOJ and BOP's inadequate use of home confinement and compassionate release, and how the crisis is impacting conditions of confinement for our clients who remain incarcerated. - Factsheet: The Worsening COVID-19 Crisis In Federal Detention (7/30/20)
By Sentencing Resource Counsel
The public health crisis in our federal prisons and jails is only getting worse. A new factsheet prepared by Sentencing Resource Counsel, available here, includes links to sources and highlights that COVID-19 is ripping through Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and infecting incarcerated individuals, who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, at a rate 5.95 times higher than the general population. It also sheds light on DOJ and BOP's inadequate use of home confinement and compassionate release, and how the crisis is impacting conditions of confinement for our clients who remain incarcerated. - More than a dozen new grants of federal sentence reductions using SS 3582(c)(1)(A), including another based on stacking\disparity\trial penalty concerns. More than a dozen new grants of federal sentence reductions using SS 3582(c)(1)(A), including another based on stacking/disparity/trial penalty concerns (last visited 4/28/20)
Sentencing Law & Policy - Materials For Supplementing Your Covid-19 Arguments (04/26/20)
By Sentencing Resource Counsel
This outline includes helpful references to materials about general background on COVID-19, citations to release grants due to COVID-19 (pretrial, pending sentencing and appeal), BOP cannot provide needed medical care and several arguments for clients at higher risk of severe illness due to age and/or underlying conditions. - AG Barr Memo for Director of Bureau of Prisons: Increasing the Use of Home Confinement At Institutions Most Affected by COVID-19 (4/3/20)
In the memo, the AG exercises his authority, under section 12003(b)(2) of the CARES Act, "to expand the cohort of inmates who can be considered for home release upon my finding that emergency conditions are materially&;affecting the functioning of the Bureau of Prisons." (emphasis added). - Federal Public & Community Defenders Letter to AG Barr re: COVID-19 (4/1/20)
This letter urges the DOJ & BOP to "immediately reduce the number of people entering federal detention and aggressively transfer or release individuals detained in federal pretrial custody," pursuant to the powers granted to the AG to expand the availability of home confinement under the CARES Act. - Letter to AG Barr from Jerrold Nadler, House Judiciary Committee Chairman, & Karn Bass, Chair, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security (3/30/20)
Urges BOP, in light of first death of a prisoner due to COVID-19 in BOP custody on March 28, 2020, at FCC Oakdale in Louisiana, to take immediate action to "release medically-compromised, elderly, and pregnant prisoners in the custody of the BOP" under BOP's compassionate release authority, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3582(c)(1)(A), and newly enacted home confinement release authority under the CARES Act. - Post Sent Release Order Contested (D-DC) (03/26/20)
- US v Garlock, No. 18-cr-00418-VC-1, 2020 WL 1439980 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 25, 2020)
(deferring self-surrender date sua sponte: "To avoid adding to the chaos and creating unnecessary health risks, offenders who are on release and scheduled to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons in the coming months should, absent truly extraordinary circumstances, have their surrender dates extended until this public health crisis has passed.") - NACDL Coronavirus Resources (last visited 3/20/20).
Includes motions and orders to reduce sentence based on COVID-19 - Motion to Continue Self-Surrender Date (N. CA) (3/18/20)
- Order Sentence Reduction COVID19 (D-MA) (03/17/20)
- Order for Telephonic Sentencing, explaining legal basis by Judge Vince Chharbria (N. CA.) (3/15/20)
- Law in the Time of Corona: Federal Defense Edition
By Federal Public Defender, District of Oregon