Poor babies. I thought these were tough guy patriots who were going to take over our nation:
A federal judge found the warden of the D.C. jail and director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt of court Wednesday and called on the Justice Department to investigate whether the jail is violating the civil rights of dozens of detained Jan. 6 defendants.
2021 Election: Complete coverage and analysis
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington acted after finding that jail officials failed to turn over information needed to approve surgery recommended four months ago for a Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendant’s broken wrist.
The defendant, Christopher Worrell, is an accused Florida Proud Boys member charged with four felonies, including rioting and spraying pepper gel at police at a critical point leading to the initial Capitol breach.
The failure of D.C. officials to turn over medical records is “more than just inept and bureaucratic jostling of papers,” Lamberth said in a hearing, raising the possibility of deliberate mistreatment.
“I find that the civil rights of the defendant have been abused. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a January 6th defendant or not, but I find this matter should be referred to the attorney general of the United States for a civil rights investigation into whether the D.C. Department of Corrections is violating the civil rights of January 6th defendants . . . in this and maybe other cases.”
Lamberth stopped short of imposing further civil sanctions on jail officials, who belatedly produced the records Tuesday, or ordering the release of inmates. But he suggested that the U.S. Marshals Service may have to move inmates from the D.C. jail to other detention facilities if they are being treated improperly.
A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed receipt of the referral Wednesday and declined to comment further.
The case spotlights spiraling frustration among U.S. judges over conditions at the long-troubled D.C. jail, specifically the effect of pandemic restrictions and crippling staff shortages at the facility, which houses 1,500 federal and local detainees.
Conditions at the 45-year-old facility have long been criticized by inmates, lawyers and judges. But the complaints reached new heights this spring after prisoner advocates criticized the prolonged confinement of detainees to stamp out the coronavirus pandemic. For about 400 days, jail officials imposed a 23-hour-a-day lockdown to enforce social distancing before restrictions were eased during the summer.
Now defense lawyers argue that complaints like Worrell’s related to medical care behind bars are the tip of the iceberg. Several have claimed in court that a lack of computers, videoconferencing rooms and jail guards, in addition to continued pandemic measures, threaten some inmates’ constitutional rights to counsel and to view government evidence against them and contribute to their defense.
Also lurking beneath such concerns is the question of how long judges will allow prosecutors to continue to ask defendants to waive their rights to a speedy trial nine months after the Capitol riot led to assaults on about 140 police officers and disrupted Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results.
A handful of Capitol breach defendants have aggressively raised concerns, but the same problems face hundreds of D.C. jail inmates awaiting trial, most of them on local charges.
An ‘insane’ coronavirus lockdown two miles from the Capitol, with no end in sight
Rioters try to enter the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (Lev Radin/Sipa USA /AP)
Some veteran defense lawyers privately noted that complaints raised on behalf of mostly White and conservative Jan. 6 defendants appears to have won more traction from some political quarters than abuse claims brought by poorer Black and Hispanic defendants who make up the bulk of the jail population.
In a statement, D.C. Deputy Mayor Chris Geldart said the department “has made every effort to comply with the orders” of the court and “works to ensure the Constitutional rights of all residents.” He said the city will cooperate with any “lawful inquiries or investigation by the United States Department of Justice and/or the United States Attorney’s Office.”
As of Sept. 2, about 37 Capitol riot defendants were jailed in Washington, a small fraction of the roughly 700 defendants held pending trial and 400 in federal custody.
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols highlighted concerns during a Sept. 20 hearing, when attorneys for defendant Edward Jacob Lang, 25, raised complaints. Lang, a former Pennsylvania high school wrestler who was charged with some of the most extreme and repeated violence against police on Jan. 6, said he could not help with his own defense because he could not thoroughly review video evidence.
Nichols said in court that there was “a lot of tension” because of “the continued detention of defendants at the D.C. jail . . . where there is complicated [digital evidence] and where the covid protocols are slowing down or otherwise making it very difficult for client communications or mounting of a defense to occur.”
The government is releasing up to 7,000 hours of video evidence that can be viewed only using a computer. Defendants can get up two weeks to view the evidence, but there is a six-week backlog in the jail for tablets, lawyers report.
As mountain of video evidence grows, Capitol riot trials are pushed to 2022 and beyond
Most defendants won’t need to view all the evidence — about nine months’ worth if viewed nonstop and end to end — and will rely on their attorneys to point out highlights. But a recent spike in coronavirus cases has landed about a quarter of the jail population in quarantine, limiting in-person meetings.
Meanwhile, a shortage of guards and the resumption last month of in-person criminal court hearings and trials at much busier D.C. Superior Court has meant that jail workers who previously supervised federal defendants’ computer use and videoconference hearings are no longer available, because they are transporting 100 or 200 local inmates every day.
As a result, since Sept. 13, videoconference hearings for federal Capitol riot cases and other jailed defendants have been sharply curtailed, at the same time that the jail is no longer performing coronavirus tests on all inmates who must go to court in person, judges said. That has led to at least one instance in which a hearing was canceled because a defendant taken to the court was sent back because he showed covid-like symptoms, only to learn that he had a pending negative test result, Lamberth said.
Emily Miller, the U.S. prosecutor charged with coordinating the disclosure of evidence across more than 600 federal Jan. 6 cases, told a judge recently that federal defenders and prosecutors are actively “brainstorming” and planning with jail leaders ways to increase the availability of technology to all inmates, not just Capitol defendants. But a panel of judges and other federal and D.C. officials that coordinates jail operations with the courts was frustrated at the Department of Corrections’ seeming lack of urgency, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan told Miller. Sullivan condemned one D.C. corrections official’s defense of the “convenience” it was already affording detained individuals in accessing laptop computers.
“It’s not a matter of convenience. It’s a defendant’s constitutional right to meet with an attorney in a meaningful way,” Sullivan thundered. “And if I have to start issuing orders and flexing muscle, which I prefer not to do but am more than capable of doing, then I’ll do it. . . . If you need me to shake order in the face of someone over at the Department of Corrections, let me know. I’m willing to work with you.”
26 years after being convicted of murder, a D.C. jail inmate is elected to public office
A federal judge found the warden of the D.C. jail and director of the D.C. Department of Corrections in contempt of court Wednesday and called on the Justice Department to investigate whether the jail is violating the civil rights of dozens of detained Jan. 6 defendants.
2021 Election: Complete coverage and analysisU.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington acted after finding that jail officials failed to turn over information needed to approve surgery recommended four months ago for a Jan. 6 Capitol riot defendant’s broken wrist.
The defendant, Christopher Worrell, is an accused Florida Proud Boys member charged with four felonies, including rioting and spraying pepper gel at police at a critical point leading to the initial Capitol breach.
The failure of D.C. officials to turn over medical records is “more than just inept and bureaucratic jostling of papers,” Lamberth said in a hearing, raising the possibility of deliberate mistreatment.
“I find that the civil rights of the defendant have been abused. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a January 6th defendant or not, but I find this matter should be referred to the attorney general of the United States for a civil rights investigation into whether the D.C. Department of Corrections is violating the civil rights of January 6th defendants . . . in this and maybe other cases.”
Lamberth stopped short of imposing further civil sanctions on jail officials, who belatedly produced the records Tuesday, or ordering the release of inmates. But he suggested that the U.S. Marshals Service may have to move inmates from the D.C. jail to other detention facilities if they are being treated improperly.
A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed receipt of the referral Wednesday and declined to comment further.
The case spotlights spiraling frustration among U.S. judges over conditions at the long-troubled D.C. jail, specifically the effect of pandemic restrictions and crippling staff shortages at the facility, which houses 1,500 federal and local detainees.
Conditions at the 45-year-old facility have long been criticized by inmates, lawyers and judges. But the complaints reached new heights this spring after prisoner advocates criticized the prolonged confinement of detainees to stamp out the coronavirus pandemic. For about 400 days, jail officials imposed a 23-hour-a-day lockdown to enforce social distancing before restrictions were eased during the summer.
Now defense lawyers argue that complaints like Worrell’s related to medical care behind bars are the tip of the iceberg. Several have claimed in court that a lack of computers, videoconferencing rooms and jail guards, in addition to continued pandemic measures, threaten some inmates’ constitutional rights to counsel and to view government evidence against them and contribute to their defense.
Also lurking beneath such concerns is the question of how long judges will allow prosecutors to continue to ask defendants to waive their rights to a speedy trial nine months after the Capitol riot led to assaults on about 140 police officers and disrupted Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results.
A handful of Capitol breach defendants have aggressively raised concerns, but the same problems face hundreds of D.C. jail inmates awaiting trial, most of them on local charges.
An ‘insane’ coronavirus lockdown two miles from the Capitol, with no end in sight
Rioters try to enter the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (Lev Radin/Sipa USA /AP)
Some veteran defense lawyers privately noted that complaints raised on behalf of mostly White and conservative Jan. 6 defendants appears to have won more traction from some political quarters than abuse claims brought by poorer Black and Hispanic defendants who make up the bulk of the jail population.
In a statement, D.C. Deputy Mayor Chris Geldart said the department “has made every effort to comply with the orders” of the court and “works to ensure the Constitutional rights of all residents.” He said the city will cooperate with any “lawful inquiries or investigation by the United States Department of Justice and/or the United States Attorney’s Office.”
As of Sept. 2, about 37 Capitol riot defendants were jailed in Washington, a small fraction of the roughly 700 defendants held pending trial and 400 in federal custody.
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols highlighted concerns during a Sept. 20 hearing, when attorneys for defendant Edward Jacob Lang, 25, raised complaints. Lang, a former Pennsylvania high school wrestler who was charged with some of the most extreme and repeated violence against police on Jan. 6, said he could not help with his own defense because he could not thoroughly review video evidence.
Nichols said in court that there was “a lot of tension” because of “the continued detention of defendants at the D.C. jail . . . where there is complicated [digital evidence] and where the covid protocols are slowing down or otherwise making it very difficult for client communications or mounting of a defense to occur.”
The government is releasing up to 7,000 hours of video evidence that can be viewed only using a computer. Defendants can get up two weeks to view the evidence, but there is a six-week backlog in the jail for tablets, lawyers report.
As mountain of video evidence grows, Capitol riot trials are pushed to 2022 and beyond
Most defendants won’t need to view all the evidence — about nine months’ worth if viewed nonstop and end to end — and will rely on their attorneys to point out highlights. But a recent spike in coronavirus cases has landed about a quarter of the jail population in quarantine, limiting in-person meetings.
Meanwhile, a shortage of guards and the resumption last month of in-person criminal court hearings and trials at much busier D.C. Superior Court has meant that jail workers who previously supervised federal defendants’ computer use and videoconference hearings are no longer available, because they are transporting 100 or 200 local inmates every day.
As a result, since Sept. 13, videoconference hearings for federal Capitol riot cases and other jailed defendants have been sharply curtailed, at the same time that the jail is no longer performing coronavirus tests on all inmates who must go to court in person, judges said. That has led to at least one instance in which a hearing was canceled because a defendant taken to the court was sent back because he showed covid-like symptoms, only to learn that he had a pending negative test result, Lamberth said.
Emily Miller, the U.S. prosecutor charged with coordinating the disclosure of evidence across more than 600 federal Jan. 6 cases, told a judge recently that federal defenders and prosecutors are actively “brainstorming” and planning with jail leaders ways to increase the availability of technology to all inmates, not just Capitol defendants. But a panel of judges and other federal and D.C. officials that coordinates jail operations with the courts was frustrated at the Department of Corrections’ seeming lack of urgency, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan told Miller. Sullivan condemned one D.C. corrections official’s defense of the “convenience” it was already affording detained individuals in accessing laptop computers.
“It’s not a matter of convenience. It’s a defendant’s constitutional right to meet with an attorney in a meaningful way,” Sullivan thundered. “And if I have to start issuing orders and flexing muscle, which I prefer not to do but am more than capable of doing, then I’ll do it. . . . If you need me to shake order in the face of someone over at the Department of Corrections, let me know. I’m willing to work with you.”
26 years after being convicted of murder, a D.C. jail inmate is elected to public office
