While Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the early release of nonviolent inmates who are scheduled for parole within the next two months, a 13-year-old panel of three federal judges declined to grant a motion that would have ordered the state to free thousands of inmates to reduce prison conditions that could become a hotbox of COVID-19 infestation.
“Defendants ask us to alter a decade-old order to address a new alleged constitutional violation—an inadequate response to a specific virus—that our prior order was never designed to address,” wrote the three judge panel in their April 7, 2020 order denying plaintiffs’ emergency motion to modify population reduction order. “This request falls outside the scope of our equitable modification authority.”
In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to release more than 30,000 people from its state prisons because of dangerous overcrowding, according to media reports, and on March 25, based on the COVID-10 outbreak an Emergency Motion to Modify Population Reduction Order requested the release to parole or post-release community supervision certain categories of inmates, including those who are scheduled for parole within a year.
“The federal panel denied it because they don't think they have the authority and not because of its merits,” said David P. Shapiro, a criminal defense attorney in San Diego. “Lawyers representing inmates need to follow the procedures outlined in the panel of judges' order.”
As previously reported, instead of modifying the order, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2009, the special panel of federal judges suggested attorneys representing inmates to file motions with judges who adjudicate major class-action lawsuits involving inmate care who happen to also be among those on the three-judge panel.
The federal panel consisted of Circuit Judge Wardlaw, Chief District Judge Mueller and District Judge Tigar.
In denying the order, the federal panel left the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation open for litigation based on the COVID-19 outbreak.
“The second someone is infected or dies while in custody, there are grounds for a lawsuit,” Shapiro told the Southern California Record. “It can be argued that the department of corrections did not do enough to prevent a mass spread of COVID-19 and did not give adequate medical care to sick inmates.”