Federal law allows inmates with hardships like illness and old age to win early release, but North Texas judges typically deny them.
By: Kevin Krause
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Many of the North Texans awarded presidential clemency in late 2024 and earlier this year had previously sought release on compassionate grounds.
They figured their age and declining health would have made them prime candidates for the program, available to those who qualify based on “extraordinary and compelling” reasons.
They were wrong.
North Texas judges don’t just hand out the nation’s highest meth sentences, as reported in December by The Dallas Morning News in its three-part series, “Meth: the Prison Pipeline.” Local judges also are among those who have granted the fewest compassionate release motions in the U.S.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission released a 2022 study of compassionate release, finding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which includes Texas federal courts, had the lowest rate of approval in fiscal year 2020, granting 13.7% of motions.
The 1st Circuit, which encompasses parts of New England, had the highest rate, at 47%.
From 2020 to 2022, the 5th Circuit’s compassionate release approval rate remained the lowest, at 9.6%, commission reports show. However, that rate increased in 2023 and 2024, removing the 5th Circuit’s distinction of being the stingiest with compassionate release.
The First Step Act in 2018 expanded the compassionate release program, and many at-risk prisoners were released during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, about 85% of motions are denied every year by judges.
In North Texas, Tina Connolly and Rebecca Jackson were among those whose requests were rejected.
Connolly was in her 50s with heart and kidney failure when she was sentenced in 2016 to two decades in prison. She used a walker; and complained even then of health problems. U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn considered those health concerns during the sentencing.
“Ms. Connolly’s situation, unfortunately, is not all that unusual. As our population of federal prisoners has aged, which it has since I’ve been on the bench, we have a lot of people with a lot of chronic health problems, including kidney failure,” Lynn said. “It is very expensive for the federal government to pay for medical care for people who are in prison who are suffering from serious health conditions as is Ms. Connolly.”
Lynn wondered aloud whether she should “alleviate a financial burden on the government,” referring to the cost of Connolly’s medical care in prison, or treat everyone equally.
“And generally my philosophy is the latter, because people just don’t get a pass for criminal behavior of this type because they have serious health conditions,” she said.
Six years later, in 2022, Lynn denied Connolly’s motion for compassionate release.
Connolly was by then 60 years old, using oxygen, confined to a wheelchair and reported having congestive heart failure, COPD, obesity, high blood pressure, stage-three kidney disease, degenerative joint disease, and cataracts, court records show.
Lynn noted that she’d served less than half of her sentence.
“Connolly contends that, due to her medical conditions, she will not ‘live to see’ her projected release date in 2033,” Lynn wrote in her order. “She has not alleged that the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) is incapable of managing her health.”
Lynn declined to comment for this story.
On Jan. 17, Biden gave Connolly clemency, which will end her sentence in July.
Rebecca Jackson also applied for compassionate release, in 2023 — her second such motion — due to being 64 years old and suffering deteriorating health.
U.S. District Judge John McBryde gave her 30 years in 2007 for selling meth.
In 2020, she wrote in a letter, which was filed in her case, seeking release. “I have been in prison for over 13 years. I am nonviolent, old and tired.”
In 2021, she was released to home confinement in the midst of the pandemic. Jackson in 2023 reported the following health conditions: type II diabetes, the removal of her bladder due to cancer, hypertension, congestive heart failure, chronic kidney disease and morbid obesity.
McBryde died in late 2022, so U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in 2023 took up and denied her compassionate release petition, saying Jackson failed to show extraordinary and compelling reasons for a sentence reduction, records show.
Biden granted clemency in December to Jackson, who’s served about 18 years of her 30-year sentence, court records show. Her house arrest will end in April.
Defendants can file the motions based on hardships and other circumstances such as old age and serious medical problems. About 137,000 people are serving sentences in federal prisons. The average age is 42, and 22% are 50 years or older, according to sentencing commission data. Drug trafficking was the most common offense.
Judges were more likely to grant the compassionate release motions of older offenders, who make up a small percentage of overall requests, the commission’s study said. Attempts to define “extraordinary and compelling” reasons for compassionate release, however, have not been easy.
The sentencing commission in late 2023 provided judges with new guidance to help shape their decisions. The commission said that if inmates have served at least 10 years of an “unusually long sentence” that would be shorter if they were convicted today due to changes in the law, they could meet the standard.
But success has proven elusive and inconsistent in courts across the U.S. Some federal circuit courts have rejected the commission’s guidance, saying the bipartisan government agency lacked the authority to enact it. Other appeals courts have upheld the policy.
Regardless, judges retain the discretion to rule how they see fit.
Pittman, McBryde and other local judges have expressed an unwillingness to grant compassionate release even in cases where good reason exists.
“If the Court is mistaken, and the defendant has spelled out extraordinary and compelling reasons for her early release, the Court would still not reduce her sentence,” Pittman wrote in his 2024 order denying a motion by Kendra Ward.
Ward, 36, received clemency from Biden in January and is expected to leave prison soon. She was serving more than 18 years in prison for selling meth.
Pittman could not be reached for comment.
The nonprofit group Families Against Mandatory Minimums has advocated for expanded use of compassionate release for older and seriously ill inmates.
“Our prison population is aging rapidly. Incarcerated elders are the most expensive to keep in prison and the least likely to reoffend,” the organization says on its website. “We believe people in prison should be released when they are too debilitated to commit further crimes.”
Nearly 11,000 federal prisoners are 60 or older, according to sentencing commission reports.
One Tarrant County man did receive compassionate release — but only after reporting he had a short time to live. Steven Ray Adams, 66, said he was dying from a terminal illness. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor granted his motion in 2019 and ordered him released, court records show.
It’s unclear whether he’s still alive. The last filing in Adams’ case, in 2020, said he was confined to his bed with a progressive form of ALS.
Meanwhile, Jose Marquez still awaits a response from a judge in the Waco division of the Western District of Texas. The former Dallas bakery shop owner is almost 70 years old, suffers from diabetes and is serving a life sentence for trafficking meth and cocaine and for money laundering.
Marquez, a nonviolent offender with a minor criminal history, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2011. Authorities said he was the leader of a drug cell who imported large amounts of meth and cocaine from Mexico and distributed it across the U.S., laundering the proceeds through his auto sales business.
He received a tougher punishment than the men who kidnapped him for ransom in Duncanville after carjacking him at gunpoint. The men, disgruntled employees of his, bound him and beat him into a coma with a baseball bat, court records show.
After rescuing Marquez from his captors in 2007, Dallas police began investigating him for drug trafficking, records show.
Marquez filed a motion for compassionate release in June 2024, saying he’s been a model prisoner who obtained his GED while behind bars.
Marquez’s prospects are not clear. In 2023, judges in the Western District of Texas granted 10% of compassionate release motions, only slightly better than the Northern District’s 5.7% rate.
What is clear is that the judge who sentenced Marquez to life in prison will not be the one who decides his compassionate release request. The judge retired in 2016, a year after being reprimanded for making unwanted sexual advances toward a court employee several years earlier, court records show.
Kevin has worked for The Dallas Morning News since 2003. He covers federal criminal courts and has been a journalist for 30 years. Kevin is a multiple recipient of the Stephen Philbin Award for excellence in legal reporting. Kevin earned a BA from Boston University.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
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