Federal Prosecutors Argue COVID-19 Is Just 'One More Way to Perish in Prison'

TomDispatch

Horrendous. Federal prosecutors argued that an 80-year-old serving a life sentence for drug offenses shouldn't be released because covid-19 is just "one more way to perish in prison."

—Erika

U.S. District Judge Donald Graham disagreed and ordered Atilano Dominguez, who was 27 years into his life sentence, to be released from federal prison on Tuesday, over the objections of the Miami U.S. Attorney's Office and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The U.S. government opposed his petition for compassionate release on the grounds that Dominguez, who's mostly confined to a wheelchair due to advanced arthritis in both knees, was a recidivism risk and that his life sentence was imposed with the knowledge that he could die of any number of illnesses in prison.

Dominguez was one of thousands of federal inmates who applied for compassionate release—a policy allows elderly and terminally ill inmates to go home ahead of schedule—in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In late March, Attorney General William Barr directed the BOP to use compassionate release, home confinement, and other measures to get elderly and at-risk inmates out of federal prison. Despite the release of more than 7,000 thousand inmates, though, the rollout of Barr's directive has been maddeningly inconsistent for inmates and families.

Dominguez was sentenced in 1994 to life in prison on two charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana and possession with intent to distribute marijuana. His sentence was upgraded to a mandatory life sentence after prosecutors filed a draconian "three strikes" enhancement against him based on previous cocaine offenses. Graham wrote in his order releasing Dominguez that the judge at Dominguez's original sentencing noted it was probably "too severe," but there was nothing the judge could do because of the mandatory sentence.

Dominguez' advanced age and long list of serious medical conditions—including diabetes, hypertension, and congestive heart failure—certainly fit the qualifying conditions for inmates at risk for COVID-19. But federal prosecutors said those were not "extraordinary and compelling reasons" to grant him relief, because he was expected to die in prison anyway.

"The government does not contest that the Defendant's age and medical condition render him vulnerable to serious consequences if he were to contract the illness," the Miami U.S. Attorney's Office argued in a motion opposing Dominguez's petition. "However, the Defendant's sentence of life imprisonment always contemplated that the Defendant could perish in prison. The existence of one more way to perish in prison, specifically COVID-19 in addition to heart disease, cancer, stroke, aneurysms and myriad other ailments that afflict the aged, does not alter the appropriateness of the Defendant's incarceration."

https://reason.com/2020/09/25/federal-prosecutors-argue-covid-19-is-just-one-more-way-to-perish-in-prison/?fbclid=IwAR1WwtBqaHydYhXQ9ZAUDTo-sfWuLI5exjQKSIhBzFTdMweN68UJ91aOT3Q

REASON.COM

Federal Prosecutors Argue COVID-19 Is Just 'One More Way to Perish in Prison'

Atilano Dominguez was serving a life sentence for m