Federal Defender Program : Compassionate Release
W . MATTHEW DODGE Federal Defender Program , Inc . Matthew _ Dodge @ fd . org
The pandemic is a three-alarm fire inside the federal prisons . Men and women living and working behind the prison walls have suffered . The Bureau of Prisons ’ s website reports that across the nation more than 38,000 federal inmates ( or more than one in four ) have tested positive for COVID-19 . Many have been hospitalized or debilitated by the disease . At least 179 prisoners , including two from our own district , have died . So , too , have two staff members .
Prisons — where social distancing is a mere rumor — are petri dishes for air-borne disease . COVID-19 is even more dangerous within the federal prisons than without . Many months ago , one federal judge in New York wondered whether the pandemic would “ convert a . . . prison sentence into a death sentence .”
From his cell , Gregory Samuda asked the same question . Nearly a decade ago , nowretired Judge Willis B . Hunt , Jr ., of the Northern District of Georgia , sentenced Samuda to serve 170 months in prison for his role in importing ecstasy pills from Jamaica to Atlanta . As the pandemic swept into Samuda ’ s prison in Pecos , Texas , the punishment grew harsher . At the age of 59 years old , Samuda suffers from a
16 December / January 2021