Inmates fearful of virus argue for their release
Coronavirus has become a “get out of jail” card for hundreds of low-level inmates across the country, and even hard-timers are seeking their freedom with the argument that it’s not a matter of if but when the deadly illness sweeps through tightly packed populations behind bars.
Among those pleading for compassionate release or home detention are the former head of the Cali drug cartel, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff and dozens of inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island, part of a jail system that lost an employee to the virus this week.
“He is in poor health. He is 81 years old,” David Oscar
NEW YORK —
Markus, the attorney for cocaine kingpin Gilberto Rodriguez-orejuela, wrote in emergency court papers this week seeking his release after serving about half of a 30-year drug-trafficking sentence. “When (not if) COVID-19 hits his prison, he will not have much of a chance.”
While widespread outbreaks of coronavirus behind bars have yet to happen, the frenzy of legal activity underscores a crude reality that’s only beginning to sink in: America’s nearly 7,000 jails, prisons and correction facilities are an ideal breeding ground for the virus, as dangerous as nursing homes and cruise ships but far less sanitary.
Stepped-up cleanings and a temporary halt to visitations at many lockups across the country in the midst of the crisis can’t make up for the fact that ventilation behind bars is often poor, in
This combination of 2019 and 2002 file photos shows Michael Cohen President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, outside his apartment building in New York, and drug kingpin Gilberto Rodriguez-orejuela leaving the Combita maximum security prison in Tunja, Colombia, before extradition to the United States in 2004. Amid the COVID-19 coronavirus threat, they are among the prisoners making pleas for compassionate release or home detention. mates sleep in close quarters tence for bilking thousands and share a small number of investors in a $17.5 billion of bathrooms. Ponzi scheme, had just asked
“Simply put, it’s impossible last month to be released in to do social distancing,” light of his terminal kidney said David S. Weinstein, a disease. Now his attorney is former federal prosecutor calling on all at-risk federal in Miami. prisoners to be released for
The 81-year-old Madoff, their own safety because of who is serving a 150-year sen- the coronavirus.