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| Michael Conahan |
A former
Pennsylvania judge involved in a scheme to send children to a for-profit
jail in exchange for kickbacks was released from federal prison with
six years left on his sentence because of coronavirus concerns, two law
enforcement officials with knowledge of the matter told The Associated
Press.
Michael
Conahan, 68, was sent home from the low-security Federal Correctional
Institution in Miami last Friday on a 30-day furlough that could lead to
permanent home confinement for the remainder of his sentence, the
officials said.
Prison
officials had released Conahan in part because he has medical
conditions that put him at a high risk for complications if he
contracted the disease, according to the law enforcement sources, who
were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and did so on
condition of anonymity.
With a furlough, an
inmate like Conahan is able to go home sooner while a final decision on
home confinement is still being made.
In
a handwritten court petition for compassionate release, which was
rejected last week on a technicality, Conahan said his high blood
pressure, heart issues and Guillain-Barre syndrome — a rare disorder in
which the immune system attacks the nerves — put him at “grave danger of
not only contracting the virus, but of dying from the virus.”
Conahan, whose corruption behavior was dissected in a documentary film, books and national news coverage,
joins the likes of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and
former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen in getting sprung from
prison early.
A message seeking comment was left with Conahan’s lawyer. The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, first reported Conahan’s release.
Conahan
was sentenced in 2011 to 17½ years in prison for his role in what
became known as the kids-for-cash scandal. The ex-Luzerne County judge
pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge for accepting a share
of $2.8 million from the builder and co-owner of the for-profit
detention center.
Conahan,
who headed the county’s court system in Northeastern Pennsylvania from
2002 to 2006 and earned the nickname “The Boss,” closed down a
county-owned juvenile detention center and signed a secret agreement to
send children to the for-profit facility, prosecutors said.
Mark Ciavarella, the
ex-juvenile court judge who sent thousands of children to the
for-profit detention center, was convicted at trial and is serving a
28-year federal prison sentence.
Soon
after their arrests, Conahan and Ciavarella reached a plea agreement to
serve a sentence of more than seven years in prison each, but a judge
rejected the deal. Had it taken effect, Conahan would have been allowed
to leave prison in 2016. Conahan’s petition to the Justice Department to
have his sentence commuted is still pending.
With
the coronavirus sweeping through federal lockups, the Bureau of Prisons
has been increasingly relying on home confinement to clear cramped
quarters and spare high-risk inmates from infection.
The
federal prison system has struggled to combat the coronavirus pandemic
behind bars, where social distancing is nearly impossible, and as of
Tuesday, 6,341 inmates had tested positive for COVID-19 at facilities
across the U.S.; nearly 5,000 had recovered. Officials said 87 inmates
have died since late March.
The
agency has given priority to inmates who’ve served at least half of
their sentence and those within 18 months of release, though it has the
ultimate discretion on who can be released.
The
Miami facility where Conahan was incarcerated has had seven inmates and
12 staff members test positive for COVID-19, but no deaths, according
to the Bureau of Prisons.
Full Article & Source:
Kids-for-cash judge released from prison over virus concerns
