Case Story: Fighting For Release During The COVID-19 Pandemic

DISCLAIMER:

CASE RESULTS DEPEND ON A VARIETY OF FACTORS UNIQUE TO EACH CASE. CASE RESULTS DO NOT GUARANTEE OR PREDICT A SIMILAR RESULT IN ANY FUTURE CASE.

Today, most of us know how dangerous COVID-19 is. But what about in March 2020?

For many, the answer is less clear. This was especially true in the criminal justice system. Across the country, people were grappling with what to do about COVID-19.

And the battle lines were clear.

On one side was defense lawyers trying to get people released from jail for fear of contracting the virus.

On the other was prosecutors arguing the risk of contracting COVID-19 was no greater in jail than out. In the middle was judges having to make difficult release/don’t release decisions.

Against this backdrop is where our story begins.

The Medical Issue

Our client was arrested on February 28, 2020 and charged federally with dealing drugs. During our first meeting, he told us he had a rare blood disorder called sickle beta thalassemia. Originally, he was concerned about being in jail because he was afraid he wouldn’t have access to the right medications to manage the disease.

We didn’t consider COVID-19 at the time because, frankly, nobody knew much about it in early March 2020. But as the pandemic progressed, it became more and more clear how serious the virus was, especially for people with certain preexisting conditions, including sickle cell diseases.

That’s when our approach to the case changed.

The Legal Fight

In the federal system, when a person is charged with a crime, they have a right to a hearing to decide whether they have to stay in jail for the duration of their case or if they can be released. This is called a detention hearing.

Normally, you get one detention hearing; one chance to convince the judge to release you. If it doesn’t work, you have to stay in jail until your case is done.

For our client, this happened on March 6, 2020. Despite our best efforts, we lost. Our client had to remain in jail until his case was over. Or so we thought.

But then COVID-19 changed everything. As we learned more about the virus, we worried about what it might do to our client if he contracted it. So we did some research. And what we found was alarming.

In short, it would likely kill him.

Now when a lawyer discovers something like this, a rule in federal court allows you to ask the judge to reconsider their decision to keep your client in jail. Unfortunately, it’s hard to do and rarely works. But this was literally a matter of life and death, so we had to try.

Armed with our new COVID-19 evidence, we fought tirelessly for our client’s release. The fight lasted over a month. We hired a sickle cell disease expert, filed 5 motions, and attended 3 evidentiary hearings.

It was the most work we have ever done to try get someone released from jail. And the hard work paid off on April 21, 2020, when the judge made her decision.

The Decision

The judge sided with us, reversed her previous decision, and allowed our client to be released from jail.

She did so out of concern for his health. She rightly understood the risk COVID-19 presented to the client and courageously decided to be one of the first judges in the country to release someone for pandemic-related reasons.

Reaching this conclusion wasn’t easy, as the judge noted in her decision: “this court has considered many hundreds of detention motions over a long period of time, and [our] motion presents one of the most difficult detention decisions this court has faced.”

The judge went on to acknowledge and reward our hard work, saying: “considering all the evidence before it, this court concludes [we] met the burden to show a compelling reason for his temporary release from pretrial detention.”

In laymen’s terms, we convinced the judge that COVID-19 was such a serious risk to our client’s health that he must be released.

Sadly, hindsight has proved both us and the judge correct. COVID-19 has ravaged jails and prisons across the country, infecting approximately 275,000 people and killing nearly 2,000 at the time of writing this.

But for the judge’s courage, our client would likely have been part of those grim statistics. Instead, he was released, he’s alive, and he’s healthy all thanks to her brave decision.