Prosecutors say prisons following safety measures

LITTLE ROCK — As defense attorneys and inmates acting on their own behalf continue to file motions in the Eastern District of Arkansas seeking release from federal prisons because of health risks from the covid-19 pandemic, federal prosecutors cited measures that all federal prisons have been required to undertake in response to a national directive.

At his daily news conference, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said a team from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was at the Forrest City federal prison in eastern Arkansas to help manage its outbreak. However, no one from the prison could be reached later in the day about what the team has found or recommended, and no information was immediately available from the CDC.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Prisons’ website Thursday afternoon indicated 27 people at the Forrest City prison’s two facilities were now confirmed to have covid-19, the disease stemming from the novel coronavirus. The website said at the Low Security unit, 20 inmates and two staff members were confirmed victims, and at the Medium Security unit, three inmates and two staff members were confirmed victims.

In a response Thursday opposing a Little Rock woman’s pro-se emergency request to be released to home confinement after serving a little over two years of a three-year, nine-month sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie Goss Dempsey noted that on March 26, U.S. Attorney General William

Barr authorized the director of the federal prison system to “prioritize the use of statutory authority to place prisoners in home confinement.”

The filing cited the bureau’s five-phase COVID-19 Action Plan, instituted in January, that was designed to maintain the safety of prison staff and inmates while fulfilling its mandate of incarcerating people sentenced by judicial orders.

The defendant in question, Lynn Espejo, 56, is at a federal holding facility in Oklahoma City. She is serving time on Arkansas convictions for wire fraud, money laundering and filing false tax returns. Dempsey argued Espejo “has not demonstrated that the plan adopted by the BOP is inadequate to either manage the outbreak or provide treatment for inmates who fall ill.”

Phase 1 of the five-phase plan consisted of establishing a task force to plan for any coronavirus transmissions and “to build on its existing procedures for pandemics.”

Phase 2, implemented March 13, initiated “aggressive measures” that included the screening of inmates and staff, including the screening

of all new inmates for symptoms and risk of exposure, requiring all asymptomatic inmates with a documented risk of exposure to be quarantined and requiring all symptomatic inmates with a documented risk to be isolated and tested “pursuant to local health authority protocols.”

It also required the suspension of social visits and tours, as well as legal visits unless an exception was created, and stopped the movement of inmates among facilities except for medical treatment and other “exigencies.”

Phase 3 began March 18, maximizing “telework” for all facilities performing administrative services, and requiring inventorying and ordering of supplies.

In Phase 4, which began March 26, the bureau expanded testing to all newly admitted inmates regardless of how they arrived, requiring that all asymptomatic inmates be quarantined for 14 days or until medically cleared, and isolating those who are symptomatic until they test negative or are cleared by medical staff as meeting CDC criteria for release from isolation.

Phase V, the current phase, began April 1 and imposes stricter measures, including keeping inmates in every institution “secured in their cells/quarters” while

having access to normal programs and services such as mental health treatment and education.

The measures are to be reevaluated after 14 days, which would be April 14 — Tuesday.

Further details of the plan are listed on the bureau’s website: www.bop.gov.

The filing noted that even in Phase V, “limited group gathering will be afforded to the extent possible” to facilitate commissary, laundry, showers, telephone and an inmate trust-fund computer system.

Dempsey noted no covid-19 cases had been reported at the Oklahoma City facility, and argued Espejo’s risk of being infected “simply as a result of her incarceration is not necessarily higher than her risk of infection upon release.”

Dempsey wrote this remains true despite the March 26 directive from Barr granting the bureau wider authority to designate inmates for home confinement, such as during the last six months or 10 percent of their sentence, or for elderly or terminally ill patients.

She wrote even though some inmates have become ill, the bureau “must consider the effect of a mass release on the safety and health of both the inmate population and the citizenry.”