Prisoners to be freed?
Court considers releasing some San Quentin inmates vulnerable to COVID-19 .
As the coronavirus sweeps through San Quentin State Prison, a state appeals court says it may order the prison to grant supervised release to hundreds of aging or medically vulnerable inmates.
After a contentious hearing in which state lawyers rejected settlement talks that could lead to releases of San Quentin inmates, a panel of the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ordered prison officials Friday to justify any further refusal to remove those with heightened risk of COVID19 from the 150yearold prison.
They include inmates serving sentences for noncapital crimes who are either 60 and older or suffering from conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes.
San Quentin had no reported cases of the coronavirus before prison officials transferred 122 inmates there from the California Institution for Men in Chino (San Bernardino County), site of the largest outbreak in the prison system, in late May, four weeks after some of them had last been tested. After the transfer, San Quentin officials disregarded advice from Marin County’s top health official to prevent any contact between the new arrivals and those already at the prison.
Since then, about twothirds of San Quentin’s 3,100 inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus, and at least 25 have died.
“There is a pandemic within San Quentin Prison that is probably more severe than it is in any jail or prison facility in the
U.S.,” Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline said at Wednesday’s hearing.
He said he was stunned that Gov. Gavin Newsom and his state prison director, Ralph Diaz, had been unwilling to discuss a settlement that would lead to release of either the inmate who filed the suit
or the larger group of vulnerable inmates, who also seek their supervised release.
With the “massive infection of staff and inmates,” said Justice Therese Stewart, there is at least a credible argument that prison officials have shown “deliberate indifference” to the condition of those in their custody.
In response, Deputy Attorney General Kathleen Walton said, “Settling the case is not on the table.” She said the inmate who filed the suit, Ivan Von Staich, has a low risk of COVID19 and is considered to pose a “moderate risk of future violence.”
Von Staich, 64, and his 65yearold cellmate, who spend 24 hours a day confined in a small cell in San Quentin’s West Block, both tested positive for the virus in mid-July. His lawyers said Von Staich is now free of symptoms, but his cellmate still suffers from fevers, coughing and other signs of the disease.
Von Staich was convicted of murder in Southern California in 1983 and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. His lawyers said his last serious prison disciplinary offense was in 1998, and the state parole board has signaled it is likely to approve his release at a hearing scheduled in October.
Prison staff “try to talk inmates with COVID19 symptoms out of medical treatment,” Von Staich’s lawyers said in a filing with the court. “They are told that hospitals in the area are overwhelmed and that they have to ‘kick it’ on their own.”
In Friday’s order, the court told prison officials to place Von Staich in quarantine immediately, either in San Quentin or in some other location where he could be supervised. The court also ordered the state to file arguments by Aug. 24 explaining why similar release should not be granted to other San Quentin inmates, except for those on Death Row, who are at risk of the disease because of their age or medical condition.
The broader release was advocated by the First District Appellate Project, a nonprofit appointed by the court to join the case last month after Von Staich had filed it on his own behalf. Kline, the presiding justice, is a 40year judicial veteran who was Gov. Jerry Brown’s legal affairs adviser in the 1970s.
Attorney L. Richard Braucher of the appellate project said the court’s intervention was urgently needed. “My client (Von Staich) and others like him are essentially lab rats,” he said.
In response, Dana Simas, spokeswoman for the prison system, declined to comment on the case but said the state is releasing large numbers of inmates who are assessed to be at high risk of COVID19 and low risk of violent acts outside prison.