Fear of coronavirus triggers Salvagno exit
Asbestos-exposing criminal released to avoid COVID-19
In 2004, Loudonville businessman Alexander Salvagno received 25 years in federal prison for environmental crimes that exposed hundreds of workers to cancer-causing asbestos.
On April 23, Salvagno received a compassionate release from prison because he risked exposure to COVID-19.
That ironic twist made Salvagno, 64, the latest federal inmate to ask for early release due to the virus that has killed more than 60,000 Americans. Depending on a federal judge’s interpreta
tion of rules that govern the potential release of prisoners for compassionate release, an inmate might be granted release — or be rejected.
Salvagno, who with his father, Raul, was convicted in one of the most serious environmental crimes in U.S. history, joins an eclectic list of inmates released early from federal prison. It includes Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump who was released from a three-year-sentence for tax evasion and other crimes; ex- state Senate leader Dean Skelos, who will end his 51-month sentence for political corruption at home; and Carl Logan, 59, whose more than 12-year sentence for a cocaine trafficking conspiracy was commuted on April 22 in Albany.
“Admittedly, (Salvagno) has a significant amount of time remaining on his sentence,” stated Senior U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn, who released Salvagno. Kahn highlighted the Danbury, Conn. prison where Salvagno was staying for “particularly serious problems controlling the spread of COVID-19.”
Twenty-six staffers and 18 inmates in Danbury have been infected. One inmate died, the Bureau of Prisons website shows. Nationwide, 1,534 federal inmates in Bop-managed institutions and 10,552 in community sites have tested positive. The virus has killed 31 inmates.
Federal inmates can request compassionate release from the Bureau of Prisons under the “First Step Act” of 2018. The decision had been entirely up to the prison system. Now inmates can ask a judge for compassionate release but only after they exhaust those efforts. The BOP must have already considered and denied the defendant’s motion — or 30 days must have elapsed from when the warden received the request.
That’s according to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, who presided over Skelos’ case.
“In ordinary circumstances, a lapse of 30 days before an inmate may seek judicial recourse is exceptionally quick,” Wood wrote on April 12. “However, today’s circumstances are not ordinary.
Infection from COVID-19 spreads so quickly, and, for many, carries such lethality that 30 days can mean the difference between life and death.”
In her ruling, Wood did not mince words.
“Jails and prison are powder kegs for infection,” she stated. “People in jails and prisons cannot practice social distancing, control their exposure to large groups, practice increased hygiene, wear protective clothing, obtain specific products for cleaning and laundry, avoid frequently touched surfaces, or sanitize their own environment.”
The judge deferred to the BOP when Skelos, 72, requested compassionate release. The Bureau of Prisons released him Tuesday. His home confinement began Thursday.
“Judges now are responding to traditional compassionate release requests from elderly and sick people, but there is more urgency because of COVID-19,” said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a prisoner advocacy group. “Other people, who likely wouldn’t have sought compassionate release during normal times, are applying because they are reading stories about how badly this disease affects even healthy people.”
Some inmates have been less successful getting out.
On April 8, Bobbie Joe Brown, 44, serving a threeyear sentence for conspiring to traffic methamphetamines in central New York, asked Senior U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue for compassionate release from her federal lock-up in Philadelphia. Brown noted she suffered a 2018 heart attack, has high blood pressure and is a non-violent offender. On April 21, Mordue rejected Brown, noting she hadn’t exhausted her attempts through the prison system.
On April 16, Mordue issued a similar rejection to Donald Geiss, 44, an inmate at Canaan federal prison in Pennsylvania. He was sentenced in December to five years and five months for a fraud scheme.
On March 30, lawyers for Gregory Kurzajcyzk, 73, of Greene County serving six-years in Danbury for possessing and distributing child pornography, asked U.S. District Judge Mae D’agostino for release to home confinement. His attorneys told the judge Kurazajcyzk has had three heart attacks, tested positive for tuberculosis and has other ailments.
D’agostino said no. “The court understands why someone in defendant’s situation would be concerned,” the judge stated, “that concern is shared by everyone who finds themselves currently incarcerated...”
“However, this court is also bound by the confines of the law, and a district court does not possess the requisite legal authority to modify or reduce a defendant’s sentence under a theory of compassionate release where the defendant has not first petitioned the BOP. The court must apply this standard evenly.”
Salvagno has high blood pressure, Kahn noted, and takes Lisinopril, an ACE inhibitor that blocks angiotensin-converting enzymes that narrow arteries and raise blood pressure. “The rapid spread of COVID-19 cases at FCI Danbury makes my own situation disturbing,” Salvagno wrote the judge.
In 2004, it was the conduct of Salvagno and his father which disturbed prosecutors. Former employees testified they were ordered to rip asbestos from as many as 2,000 buildings statewide. The Salvagnos cut corners, made millions of dollars and, prosecutors said, endangered lives. They had a phony testing lab in Albany that falsified 75,000 tests for projects that included removing asbestos from schools, churches, hospitals, banks and a nuclear plant.
They were convicted of racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act and Alexander Salvagno was also convicted of tax fraud. Salvagno’s father, 87, serving a 19-year sentence, is in a Philadelphia halfway house.
“Possessed of absolutely no concern for the health of their employees and the unsuspecting public, Alex and Raul Salvagno knew that their asbestos removal activities would kill and injure — albeit more slowly but just as certainly — as if they gathered a crowd, took aim, and fired into it, over and over again,” Assistant U.S. Craig A. Benedict wrote Judge Howard Munson. “The United States implores this court, do not sentence Alex and Raul Salvagno — the dark souls of this criminal enterprise — to a sentence that will allow either defendant to be released from jail before or at the time that their former workers begin to die. This is the extraordinary case that calls for the maximum sentence.”
In January, Alexander Salvagno was rejected when he asked Kahn for compassionate release to take care of his children in the wake of his wife’s death. When he asked again in March, Salvagno expressed fear that his son could contract COVID-19 in the foster home where he was staying.
The decision to release Salvagno “does not in any way downplay the severity of the crimes for which he was sentenced,” Kahn stated. “But the court at the time of sentencing did not intend for that sentence to include incurring a great and unforeseen risk of severe illness or death brought on by a global pandemic.”