Sacramento judge will hear defense attorneys’ case for early jail releases
A Sacramento judge will hear public defenders’ demands for the early release of county inmates in a turning point in the attorneys’ months-long legal battle to reduce the county’s jail rolls during the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge David De Alba set the Aug. 31 hearing in status conference call last week.
Sacramento County’s public defenders are petitioning on behalf of at least four medically vulnerable inmates arguing their health and lives are at risk in unsafe and substandard county lockups.
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the county’s jails, had decreased populations by more than 1,200 since the pandemic began. But the defense attorneys are seeking a temporary cap of 1,800 inmates and single-cell jail occupancy to slow the virus’ spread.
On Thursday, De Alba directed District Attorney’s Office and Sacramento County Counsel lawyers to review the medical records of four county inmates before the hearing.
Attorneys have been fighting since March for a court hearing citing the dangers posed by COVID-19 to the hundreds held in the county’s jails in downtown Sacramento and in Elk Grove.
De Alba had rejected attorneys’ earlier bids for a Superior Court hearing.
That set up a July filing before the California State Supreme Court that described Sacramento County’s jails as a public health “tinderbox” that threatened inmates, jailers and medical staff inside and the larger community outside the jails’ walls.
“The superior court has refused to act and the jail system remains a tinderbox,” the attorneys argued in the July filing before the state’s high court. “Containment is impossible unless the court takes steps to reduce the population...By allowing the jail system to operate at single-cell capacity, the court can save lives in and out of jail,” the attorneys wrote.
The state justices in a 2-1 decision earlier this month rejected the Sacramento attorneys, but their ruling gave the lawyers a road map to take another run at the local court.
Concerns over the virus’ spread in the state’s jails and prisons has reached a crisis point as the pandemic rages through California’s prison population.
More than 9,000 inmate cases of coronavirus and at least 2,100 cases among prison staffers have been reported in the state’s prisons since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. California’s prison population has dipped below 100,000 inmates for the first time in 30 years on early releases to try to curb the rapid spread of the deadly respiratory virus.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Scott Jones is refusing to give COVID-19 testing and case information to the oversight board in charge of monitoring the state’s jails, leaving the public in the dark about how the virus has spread among inmates and staff under his control. Sacramento, which houses about 2,700 inmates, is one of two counties that said it will not provide the information to the state — the other is Tehama.
As of Tuesday, according to a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, staff had completed 2,688 COVID-19 tests since the pandemic began. Of those, 42 have been positive. There were 18 COVID-19 positive inmates in custody.
At least 53 inmates have died including at least 25 at San Quentin tied to the transfer in May of 121 prisoners from the California Institution for Men in Chino, the site of an earlier outbreak. A corrections officer at San Quentin also died earlier this week from COVID-19 complications, state corrections officials reported.
More than 2,500 inmates in San Quentin state prison in Marin County have contracted the disease. A new outbreak at Folsom State Prison this week led to more than 100 confirmed coronavirus cases and the death of a prison employee, The Sacramento Bee reported Thursday.
Friends, family and prisoners’ rights advocates held a Thursday evening vigil outside the Sacramento-area home of state Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Ralph Diaz to protest conditions inside the state’s prisons during the health crisis.
This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Sacramento judge will hear defense attorneys’ case for early jail releases."
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