A new report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) shows that "compassionate release" of federal prisoners rose dramatically in 2020, mainly because the COVID-19 pandemic provided a compelling reason to free offenders whose age or medical condition made them especially likely to die from the disease. In fiscal year 2020 (October 2019 through September 2020), 1,805 prisoners were granted compassionate release, more than 12 times the number in 2019. Nearly all of that increase happened in the second half of the fiscal year as the coronavirus spread and presented a growing threat to vulnerable prisoners.
One of those prisoners was Atilano Dominguez, who had served 27 years of a life sentence for marijuana offenses. As Reason's C.J. Ciaramella reported in 2020, Dominguez was 80 years old and "mostly confined to a wheelchair due to advanced arthritis in both knees." Yet federal prosecutors argued that he "was a recidivism risk and that his life sentence was imposed with the knowledge that he could die of any number of illnesses in prison." As they saw it, COVID-19 was just "one more way to perish in prison." U.S. District Judge Donald Graham rejected that argument and ordered Dominguez's release on September 22, 2020, shortly before a nationwide surge in coronavirus cases.
