State Supreme Court, 5-4, Dismisses Petition for Release of Inmates During Pandemic
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State Supreme Court, 5-4, dismisses petition for release of inmates during pandemic By Alexis Krell The News Tribune July 23, 2020 01:28 PM , Updated July 23, 2020 02:05 PM A 5-4 opinion from the Washington State Supreme Court Thursday dismissed a petition that sought the release of certain inmates in response to the pandemic. The lawsuit was filed by Columbia Legal Services in March on behalf of five inmates at various Department of Corrections facilities. It sought the release of people over the age of 50, those with underlying medical conditions, and those with release dates within 18 months. The court initially denied the petition 5-4 in an April order. Columbia Legal Services said in a press release last month that the court had “not yet issued any final opinions with their reasoning,” and that they’d filed a new motion, asking “the Court to admit additional evidence, reevaluate its April 23 order in light of new evidence, and appoint an expert to investigate and report to the Court to ensure that DOC is meeting its obligations to protect people in DOC custody from COVID-19.” In the court’s Thursday opinion, Chief Justice Debra Stephens wrote for the majority: “Petitioners ask the court to force Governor Jay Inslee and Department of Corrections Secretary Stephen Sinclair to reduce the prison population by ordering the immediate release of three categories of offenders. But the writ they seek asks us to encroach on the executive branch and exceed the court’s authority; it would require the judiciary to supervise the executive based on policies the legislature never approved, in direct violation of long recognized separation of powers principles.” Justices Charles Johnson, Barbara Madsen, Susan Owens and Lisa Worswick signed the opinion. It went on to say: “The governor has issued proactive orders to reduce prison populations and to protect offenders incarcerated in prison. The Department has implemented a multifaceted strategy designed to protect offenders housed at various facilities, increasing those protections as more information becomes available about the virus and its risks. Part of that strategy includes a release of some nonviolent offenders.” It concluded: “We are not indifferent to the serious dangers faced by petitioners and other inmates at heightened risk of contracting COVID-19 in Washington’s correctional facilities, but how the governor and secretary address these dangers and also protect the public necessarily involves the exercise of discretionary authority that we cannot direct. Even if we could do so, nothing before us suggests how we would succeed where those charged with running Washington’s correctional system have failed.” Justices Steven González, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, Mary Yu and Raquel Montoya- Lewis dissented. “Recently, positive cases at the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center (CRCC) — which is more than an hour away from community hospitals — doubled in a week, with 101 inmates and staff infected and 1,815 inmates exposed,” González wrote in the dissenting opinion. “We should have retained the matter, ordered the State to provide an updated report, appointed a fact finder, allowed the petitioners to amend their action, and given the petitioners’ claims the scrutiny they deserve.” In response to an emergency motion by Columbia Legal Services, in April the high court directed the governor and secretary to report what was being done to protect inmates. González noted that there have been at least 651 prisoners across the country who have died from COVID-19, including several in Washington, and that Washington’s prison population has already been reduced from roughly 18,000 to 16,000 as the state has released some nonviolent offenders in response to the pandemic. “Because prisons are cramped and crowded environments, petitioners are at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19, and serious outbreaks of this deadly disease have already occurred in multiple prisons, putting inmates, staff, and the community at risk.” González wrote in a footnote that the petitioners “ask us to consider evidence about the current outbreak at the CRCC, including declarations from three people who are confined there. According to these declarations, because of the outbreak, individuals are confined to their cells for 23.5 hours per day, and those confined in cells that lack toilets and water have had to urinate in bottles, or even soil themselves, while waiting hours for an escort to the bathroom.” He went on to say, “Evidence that there has been a major outbreak at the CRCC is highly relevant to the petitioners’ claim that DOC’s policies and procedures, which it purports it is using in all of its facilities to mitigate the risk of harm from the virus, do not sufficiently mitigate that risk. We should take this evidence into consideration and enter an order to show cause why an expert should not be appointed.” In another footnote he wrote that political organizations spread false information in a social media campaign after the April order “that the dissenting justices would have ordered state officials to immediately release mass numbers of serious violent offenders.” He wrote that the campaign used “images of the justices in a style reminiscent of ‘wanted’ posters,” and that: “Not surprisingly, the campaign incited harassment and threats toward the dissenting justices, with especially personal and hateful threats directed to the justices of color. Because of these threats, I feel it is important to take the extraordinary step of making clear that the information circulated was false, and no justice would have ordered such relief that day.” A look inside the temporary tents set up in the yard of the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Connell, north of the Tri-Cities, because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Washington State Department of Corrections Alexis Krell 253-597-8268 Alexis Krell covers local, state and federal court cases that affect Pierce County. She started covering courts in 2016. Before that she wrote about crime and breaking news for almost four years as The News Tribune’s night reporter. Read more here: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/coronavirus/article244441082.html#storylink=cpy .