Compassionate Release Leaves Thousands of Inmates in Limbo
The approval of compassionate release motions depends on sentence length, legal representation and judge discretion.
Landwebs
Wide disparities in the results of compassionate release motions show that whether defendants get released early during the pandemic has had almost as much to do with which courts are hearing their motion as it does with the facts of their cases, reports CNN. While nearly 50 percent of compassionate release motions decided by the federal court in Massachusetts and more than 60 percent decided by the court in Oregon were approved during the same time period, in the Eastern District of Kentucky judges only granted about 6 percent of compassionate release motions in 2020 and the first half of 2021. In some judicial districts, the approval rate was even lower.
Reasons behind the disparities have to do with variations in sentence length and legal representation for inmates, as well as differing approaches between more liberal and conservative judges. Overall, 17.5 percent of compassionate release motions were granted in 2020 and the first six months of 2021, newly released sentencing commission statistics show. But that rate ranged from a low of 1.7 percent in the Southern District of Georgia, where all but four of 230 motions were denied, to a high of 77.3 percent in the District of Puerto Rico, where 17 of 22 motions were granted. Just over 40 percent of motions decided in March 2020 were approved, but that fell to less than 17 percent in December and about 11 percent in June 2021. The decline this year came as the number of new coronavirus cases behind bars receded and vaccines became widely available in the prison system. Of the roughly 250 people who have died of coronavirus in federal prison, about 70 had applied for compassionate release before their death.
