Judge Rejects Reality Winner's Petition for Release From Prison Due to COVID-19

A federal judge has rejected a motion to commute Reality Winner’s sentence to home confinement despite the presence of COVID-19 at the federal prison where she is housed. 

In a Friday order, District Chief Judge Randal Hall, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, said he agreed with federal prosecutors that Winner has not exhausted her administrative remedies through the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Hall also held that the bureau, not the judiciary, has the sole authority to grant Winner “compassionate release.” 

Hall noted that, even if he did have authority to commute her sentence because of extraordinary circumstances associated with the spread of COVID-19 and her prior medical conditions, he wouldn’t do so.

“Winner is in a medical prison, which is presumably better equipped than most to deal with the onset of COVID-19 in its inmates,” he said.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Bobby Christine declined to comment.

Winner counsel Joe Whitley, a partner at the Atlanta offices of Baker Donelson, said his team was disappointed by Hall’s ruling.

“Our motion for compassionate release provided the court with, in our view, the correct, constitutional legal pathway for Judge Hall—commensurate with similar favorable district court decisions across the country—to permit Reality to serve the remainder of her sentence in home confinement. … We can only hope that the court’s decision does not result in Reality being exposed to this deadly virus,” Whitley said.

Winner was the first person prosecuted by the Trump administration for leaking information to the media.

Hall said Winner asked him to commute the remaining 19 months of her 63-month sentence just two days after she submitted a written request for compassionate release to the warden at FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, where she is incarcerated.  

“The BOP essentially must be given at least 30 days to consider any request for compassionate release,” Hall said. “This waiting period is appropriate because the BOP is better positioned to assess an individual inmate’s present circumstances.”

The judge also concluded that, “In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the BOP has implemented policies and proactive measures to protect the health and safety of its prisons’ populations … the expertise and informed assessment of the BOP should not be heedlessly omitted from the process.”

In court papers filed Wednesday, Whitley called the federal prison system’s claims that it has taken precautionary measures to stem the spread of COVID-19, “demonstrably inaccurate.”

On Friday, the Bureau of Prisons reported that 620  inmates and 357 staff members in the nation’s federal prisons have tested positive for COVID-19—an increase of 80 inmates and 34 staff from three days ago. Two-dozen inmates have died, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations.

FMC-Carswell has reported that only two inmates are infected, a number that has remained unchanged for nearly two weeks as the virus has spread through a nearby federal prison. News reports have said six Carswell guards had symptoms and 31 inmates have been quarantined. 

Hall also took issue in his order with findings by other district courts across the nation that have labeled as “outdated” a federal policy giving the director of the Bureau of Prisons sole authority to approve an inmate’s compassionate release petition for “extraordinary and compelling” reasons. 

Hall said those decisions by other courts “rest upon a faulty premise” that the federal law expanding an inmate’s ability to seek compassionate release rendered earlier release policies established by the U.S. Sentencing Commission inappropriate.

Hall insisted that the Sentencing Commission, not the judiciary, “must determine what constitutes an appropriate use of the “compassionate release” provision.