Judge refuses to send defendant in drug case to problematic prison in Brooklyn

A federal judge, citing complaints of squalid conditions, near-constant lockdowns and severe staffing shortages at a long-troubled federal prison in Brooklyn, declined Wednesday to order a man convicted in a drug case sent there to await sentencing in March.

“It is imperative that those detained pursuant to a court order be treated humanely,” Judge Jesse M. Furman of the Federal District Court in Manhattan wrote, adding that at least two other judges had in recent years refused to make this order. suspects are sent to prison, the Metropolitan Detention Center, on similar grounds.

The colossal concrete center known as the MDC has served at least as a temporary home for many accused gangsters, terrorists and fraudsters and, lately, for such prominent suspects as Sam Bankman-Fried, R. Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The jail currently has a population of approximately 1,544, according to the jail website. Most of the inmates are in custody awaiting trial, and others, like the defendant in the case before Judge Furman, have been convicted and are awaiting sentencing. At the same time, the judge said, the MDC is experiencing a serious shortage of corrections staff: It is operating at only about 55 percent of its full workforce, leaving a 10-to-1 ratio of inmates to officers, which the judge said is still the case. called untenable.

In the case before Judge Furman, the defendant, Gustavo Chavez, 70, pleaded guilty in November to possession of drugs containing fentanyl with intent to distribute. He now faces a possible sentence of up to twenty years.

Ordinarily, the judge wrote, Mr. Chavez, who had been out on bail, would have been subject to mandatory detention if convicted because of the nature of his crime. But Judge Furman cited a provision that allowed him to find “exceptional reasons” for Mr. Chavez to remain free until sentencing.

“The court concludes that the circumstances in the MDC qualify as ‘exceptional reasons,’ justifying Chavez’s continued release,” Judge Furman wrote.

Mr. Chavez’s attorney, Andrew J. Dalack, of the city’s Federal Defenders office, called the judge’s decision thoughtful and thorough.

“Unless the Justice Department can address the chronic understaffing that is causing these terrible conditions,” Mr. Dalack said, “the solution is simple: detain fewer people, especially people like Mr. Chavez, who clearly pose no threat for the population. or a risk of flight.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department and runs the prison, had no comment on the judge’s decision. But it said it is making “every effort to ensure the physical safety of the individuals confined in our facilities through a controlled environment that is safe and humane.” The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is prosecuting Mr. Chavez, had no comment.

The MDC is the main federal detention center in New York City following the closure of its sister prison in Manhattan by the Bureau of Prisons in 2021 due to poor conditions there. (The Manhattan jail was also where Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.)

In his 19-page ruling, Judge Furman said the MDC’s problems are long-standing: In the winter of 2019, when a polar vortex engulfed the East Coast, a power outage at the prison left prisoners without light or heat for an entire week , he wrote. . (Last year, a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the people who lived there at the time was settled for as much as $10 million.)

“It has reached the point where it is routine” for federal judges in Manhattan and Brooklyn “to grant suspects reduced sentences based on the conditions of confinement in the MDC,” Judge Furman wrote.

“Prosecutors no longer even fight, let alone dispute that the course of events is unacceptable,” the judge added.

He said the prison’s inmates also “spend an inordinate amount of time” on lockdown, not being allowed to leave their cells for visitors, phone calls, showers, classes or exercise.

“Confining prisoners to their cells amounts, for at least some prisoners, to solitary or near solitary confinement,” Judge Furman wrote, “a practice that is increasingly viewed as inhumane.”

The judge said MDC prisoners had been in lockdown for much or all of the past three weeks last Thursday following an attack on staff members. One defendant reported being incarcerated for 137 days, or more than half of the 245 days he was held at the facility.

Judge Furman said the prison was also “notoriously and in some cases extremely slow in providing necessary medical and mental health care to inmates.” He cited a case in which the prison had ignored an order to transport an inmate for surgery to repair his cheek, which had been broken by an inmate at another facility.

Because of the delays, Judge Furman said, the defendant was told his cheek would have to be re-broken before the surgery because it had not healed properly.

Judge Furman noted that the federal government, which operates the MDC, has pushed to transfer control of Rikers Island to the city because of the dire state of New York City’s prisons.

“It is ironic, to say the least, that even as the executive branch fails to do what is necessary to care for its own home,” the judge wrote, she “has sought the appointment of an outside trustee to ‘ to tackle unsafe issues’. “dangerous and chaotic conditions in the New York City prison system.”