“One-man business is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Warren said in an interview. “And we’re talking about people who have not been convicted yet.”
The Massachusetts Democrat, a member of the Senate leadership team Chuck Schumer, said that although limited use of solitary confinement was justified, she was concerned that law enforcement officials were using it to “punish” the accused on January 6 or to “break them so that they would cooperate.”
Her feelings are shared by Durbin, who is also chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and expressed surprise that all the accused detained on January 6 are being held in the so-called ‘restrictive housing’. While their defense of the rights of accused rioters as criminal defendants is unlikely to change the handling of those cases by the Department of Justice, it is a striking case of prominent progressives using their political influence to bolster their criminal reform calls, even on behalf of Donald Trump supporters who besieged. the entire legislative branch in January.
Durbin, who has long sought to eradicate solitary confinement, told POLITICO that such conditions should be a ‘rare exception’ for accused insurgents or any other prisoners.
“There has to be a clear justification for that, in very limited circumstances,” he said.
DC government officials say the pandemic already has a sharply limited freedom of movement in the jail where most of the accused are being held on January 6. In fact, since the start of the pandemic, the entire prison has been subject to strict lock-in procedures, a ruling that has sparked broader controversy over prisoners’ rights. But restrictive housing is a maximum security designation, and the common denominator for the Capitol defendants – which is not expected to facilitate, even if it is to limit the pandemic – is a notable decision for a large group of prisoners who not yet tried are their alleged crimes.
Asked about the Democratic senators’ concerns, a spokesman for the DC Department of Corrections pointed to the growing number of educational programs and the limited access to facilities currently offered to inmates.
“We appreciate the concern, patience and support of our neighbors as we work to keep everyone within the DOC safe, as well as to support the public safety of everyone in the district,” spokeswoman Keena Blackmon said.
Warren and Durbin’s interest in the circumstances in which defendants were detained on January 6 comes amid a major effort to arrest and arrest the hundreds of people breaking the Capitol and the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden government. prosecute.
Dozens of men imprisoned in DC are considered by prosecutors and judges to be the worst participants in the January 6 violence, a status that apparently cannot offer sympathy for it. As their numbers increased, the plight of the accused attracted the attention of federal judges and defense attorneys.
Of course, Warren and Durbin were also targets for the very rioters they are now talking about. In fact, an accused – Ronald Sandlin – is accused of being one of the first to break into the Senate and walk outside the gallery’s doors with police officers in Capitol, just as senators escaped to safety.
Sandlin recently read a statement in court describing the circumstances in which he is being held as ‘mental torture’.
When another accused, Lisa Eisenhart, challenged these conditions as unconstitutional last month and demanded that they be transferred to another prison, the DC government defended its decision in court.
“A policy reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective in the management of a correctional facility is not punishable, even if the policy is applied to a prisoner,” said Stephanie Litos, a lawyer for the city, recently said in a statement acknowledging that the city’s policy was applied to all detainees on January 6.
Judge Royce Lamberth rejected Eisenhart’s challenge after the city’s lawsuit was filed. (She was later released after a decision in the Court of Appeal undermined the government’s case for her detention.) But the longer the Capitol’s defendants languish – prosecutors say it could take months before they obtain the evidence they received from the uprising , fully searched. loud sound their alarm about the toll their isolation demanded.
‘It’s not normal. It is not normal to isolate people and have them eat on the floor, ”said Marty Tankleff, a lawyer for two accused, Edward Lang and Dominic Pezzola.
Tankleff, who himself was sentenced to nearly two decades in prison before his release in 2008, has urged other lawmakers who see the January 6 defendants’ terms as unfair to contact him.
Attorneys for a slew of other defendants, meanwhile, believe their clients’ circumstances have made it nearly impossible to hold genuine attorney-client meetings. Two defendants contracted Covid in the DC jail, and one, Ryan Samsel, claims he was beaten by a prison guard and left with permanent eye damage. According to judges and federal authorities, the incident is being investigated.
The detained riot accused Richard Barnett, who is partly charged with breaking into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and posing with his feet in her office in front of a now infamous photo, regrets the conditions under which he is being tried.
“I was here a long time. “It is not fair,” Barnett said. ‘You leave out all the others. I need help. “
Others complained about access to the necessary medicine or health monitoring, which resulted in the intervention of judges. One, Jacob Chansley, won a transfer to a prison in Alexandria, Va., After the DC prison said it was too heavy to provide him with organic food that he said was needed to facilitate his spiritual practice.
Some January 6 defendants argued that there was a racial component to their treatment: most were white – some affiliated with white nationalist groups – while most inmates and prison guards in the Black area were black.
Judge Paul Friedman said last week that these concerns “are not necessarily illegal.”
“It could be that some of the people arrested on January 6 are white supremacists,” or that they are considered that, he added.
Prisoners of rebellion are not completely isolated from the outside world. While in their cells, they have access to tablet computers that they can use to exchange messages with friends and family. They can also see other accused rioters during the one hour a day they are given outside their cell, although this is also their only opportunity to shower, exercise and make contact with their lawyers.
But as the defendants’ complaints increased, so did the involvement of judges in the Washington district. Judge Emmet Sullivan indicated last week that he plans to meet with officials from the DC Department of Corrections to discuss the conditions of inmates on Jan. 6.
Although he did not disclose the outcome of this week’s meeting during a trial, Sullivan in particular encouraged the accused’s lawyer to sit in Georgia, where he was arrested. In the condition, Sullivan noted, the accused would not necessarily be placed by default.