Compassionate Release Victory!

I had initially posted a lovely picture of our client and Jill Lesley, a lawyer with our office,
after Jill successfully argued and WON compassionate release for our client in South
Carolina District Court! I then found out I shouldn’t have posted a picture of the inside
of a federal courtroom on social media so I immediately removed it. Still—we’re
THRILLED with the decision in this case and want others to know all about it. Criminal
justice isn’t for the faint of heart, so when we get wonderful results like this, it’s a real
cause to celebrate. And I hope that by sharing our client’s story, it will help others see
how they too may be able to win their, or their loved ones’, cases.

Our deserving client did everything right—she entered drug rehabilitation before
she was even arrested on her federal charges and has stayed clean for 6 years. She
took advantage of all the programming that was available to her in the Bureau of
Prisons while she was serving her sentence. She had a completely clean disciplinary
history. The primary ground for our motion was that her minor son needed a suitable
caretaker after the untimely death of her mother. The young boy was living between his
step-grandfather’s and our client’s fiance’s house and was struggling with the death of
his beloved grandmother. The two gentlemen also had work obligations that weren’t
compatible with their being primary caretakers. While our client had half-siblings, she
was not close with any of them and they had no previous role in our client’s child’s life.

Jill presented a lovely argument for why our client deserved this extraordinary
relief and our client testified. The judge asked her some questions and gave the
Government an opportunity to put their reasons for opposing our motion on the record.
After an hour-long hearing, the district court judge ruled from the bench that he was
granting her compassionate release. She’ll remain on home confinement but she’ll be
able to spend the rest of her sentence with her young son.

The fairly new First Step Act (it went into effect in December 2019) has allowed
federal criminal inmates to directly request compassionate release from the federal
courts, and it has been a wonderful remedy for ameliorating some of the draconian
effects of federal sentencing. And it has allowed federal district court judges—who
know more about these cases than anyone—to craft sentencing solutions to really
promote justice in deserving cases. We’re thrilled for our client who had roughly two
years taken off her sentence, and also for her son, who again has a mother—who is
clean and has her criminal troubles behind her– to care for him.