CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday rejected an emergency request to order the release of medically vulnerable Cook County Jail detainees due to an ongoing COVID-19 threat, but granted a temporary restraining order forcing Sheriff Tom Dart to comply with strict sanitation and testing measures.
A lawsuit filed last week by the Loevy and Loevy law firm and the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University alleged Dart has failed to stop a “rapidly unfolding public health disaster” at the sprawling jail complex. The jail now ranks at or near the top of lists of single locations for COVID-19 infections in the country.
The suit sought class-action status for all of the jail’s 4,500 detainees and also a temporary restraining order calling for the immediate release of any prisoner whose constitutional rights are being violated by their continued detention amid the coronavirus crisis.
In his 37-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly acknowledged the potential “grave risks” to health at the jail, which so far has seen 251 detainees and 150 staff members test positive for the virus — including one inmate who died earlier this week.
But Kennelly wrote that the plaintiffs had failed to show that they’d exhausted their options in state court — namely seeking expedited bond review under rules established by Cook County Chief Criminal Judge Leroy Martin Jr. last month amid the widening pandemic.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs had argued that the bond review process was unduly cumbersome and ultimately “futile” for many detainees.
But Kennelly noted in his ruling that in one week in late March when expedited bond hearings were held, the jail’s population decreased by 424 detainees. Since March 9, the population has decreased by 1,175 detainees — bringing it to a record low for the past few decades, Kennelly wrote.
The judge also said none of the named plaintiffs had even gone to court to seek a bond reduction before filing suit.
“In the court’s view, it is rather incongruous to call an otherwise available process unnecessarily time-consuming or futile when one has made no effort to initiate it,” Kennelly wrote.
While Kennelly rejected the plaintiffs’ main request for immediate release on bond, he did grant a temporary restraining order requiring the sheriff to swiftly establish a policy “requiring prompt coronavirus testing of detainees who exhibit symptoms” as well as those exposed to others who have tested positive.
Under Kennelly’s order, face masks should be provided to any detainee in quarantine. And by Friday, the judge said, the sheriff’s office must begin “providing soap and/or hand sanitizer to all detainees in quantities sufficient to permit them to frequently clean their hands.”
The judge also ordered Dart to provide sanitation supplies to enable the jail’s staff and detainees to “regularly sanitize surfaces and objects on which the virus could be present,” including cells, bathrooms and showers.
The order also directed Dart to strictly enforce social distancing during the intake process for new prisoners, including suspending the use of bullpens to hold multiple detainees awaiting entry to the jail.
———
©2020 Chicago Tribune
Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.