A long-form account of one small part of modern stories about compassionate release for dying federal prisoners

Anyone interested at all in the topic of compassionate release should be sure to make time to read this extended account of one federal prisoner's quest to help fellow prisoners secure end-of-life sentence reductions. This piece by Anna Altman for The Atavist Magazine is fully titled "The Quality of Mercy: Gary Settle has helped dozens of federal prisoners get compassionate release. Will it ever be his turn to go home?". Here is one small snippet of very long piece that is worth the time to read in full:

Compassionate release is grounded in the idea that changes to a person’s health may weaken the justification for their incarceration.  What reason is there for imprisoning someone with Alzheimer’s when he no longer understands that he is being punished?  When someone with late-stage liver disease can’t get out of bed and is no longer a threat to society?  When “rehabilitation” is no longer feasible because a person has advanced cancer?  “We’re not doing any social good, if we were in the first place, in keeping them locked up,” [FAMM's Mary] Price said.  “And we can do a great deal of good in terms of helping people repair relationships and comfort each other and say goodbye.”

There is also a financial calculus that works in the BOP’s favor, one noted prominently in a 2013 DOJ report on compassionate release: It’s almost always cheaper to release sick people than to keep them locked up until they die.  One study found that the annual cost of caring for just 21 seriously ill prisoners in California was almost $2 million per person, while the median per capita cost of nursing home care in the state was $73,000 per year.

After a judge allowed [terminal cancer patient R.] Smith to go home, Settle noticed a shift at Butner.  He later wrote an email to FAMM, trying to put into words what he was witnessing.  “In this place of death and dying, among incarcerated men who are holding on to life with nothing but more cells, more keys, more misery in their future, your efforts are having real, tangible results.  Your efforts are giving hope,” he wrote.  “You are giving life back to people, and you are giving them the most precious gift of all, time. Time to heal old wounds, to take a last breath of freedom and to leave this world with peace and dignity.”

FAMM worked closely with Settle through the summer and fall of 2019 to help people at Butner.  “We didn’t appoint him,” Price said. “He appointed himself.”  Settle made copies of FAMM’s newsletter and distributed them to his neighbors.  He kept an eye out for people whose health was worsening and approached those he thought might qualify for compassionate release.  He told them what he knew about the First Step Act, which he had studied, and about the Compassionate Release Clearinghouse.  He spent six to eight hours a day requesting medical records, addressing envelopes, and updating his contacts on the outside about various cases.  Settle read medical records, cross-referencing terms with a diagnostic manual and a medical encyclopedia he’d ordered, so he could send the most pertinent information about sick prisoners to their lawyers.  Before long his cell was covered with piles of paper.

Settle also relayed information from incarcerated individuals to their family members.  He helped people who were too sick to make it to a computer, those who had been transferred off-site for care, and others who had never learned to read or write.  Sometimes he wrote compassionate release requests himself, parroting the language he had seen in other applications.  The ones that went to the BOP were all but certain to be rejected or ignored, but that was part of the process: For a prisoner to file a motion directly with a judge, they first had to “exhaust administrative remedies,” in legal parlance.

Word got around Butner about what Settle was doing.  He would leave his cell after a nap to find four or five guys gathered outside, some of them in wheelchairs with paperwork in their laps.  He was willing to assist just about anyone — he said he only refused people convicted of sex crimes.  “Gary is able to form relationships with all kinds of people,” said Juliana Andonian, an attorney who used to work at FAMM.  “He didn’t want to make himself the center of the story.  That was really notable, the lack of ego.”

It isn’t uncommon for people in prison to help one another with legal matters.  Jailhouse lawyers — some with legal training, some without—review statutes in a prison’s law library, file paperwork, and perform other tasks for fellow prisoners, often for a fee or some other form of compensation.  “Someone less sincere could make a lot of money or do a lot of harm,” Andonian said.  Settle refused payment, even to cover the cost of emails he sent and phone calls he made.  The mother of a man Settle helped go home remembered sending him a thank-you note.  “That’s about all he let me send him,” she said.

One day a thought dawned on Price.  “He is doing this job that the Bureau of Prisons should be doing,” she said.  “They should be moving heaven and earth to be sure that people are connected to family and loved ones when they’re near the end of their lives.”