Surge in jail COVID cases has inmates asking courts for help. One of them is pregnant.
The surge of COVID-19 cases racing through the Mecklenburg County Jail has triggered a flurry of emergency court filings aimed at getting at-risk inmates released.
In two of the filings this week, the inmates involved are described as suffering from chronic health problems that make them a higher risk of contracting the disease. According to court documents, one of them already has.
A third request filed Tuesday concerns an inmate who is 28 weeks pregnant.
The rapid spread of the disease — as of Monday the sheriff’s office reported 48 active inmate cases; six weeks ago it had two — also has renewed demands from lawyers and activists that county leaders do more to reduce the inmate population, which as of Monday stood at just below 1,400.
Starting in late March in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 through the jail and the courthouse, the Mecklenburg courts suspended most misdemeanor arrests while freeing dozens of inmates accused or convicted of low-level, nonviolent crimes.
The steps may have delayed the jail outbreak, but it did not stop it. According to Mecklenburg County Public Defender Kevin Tully, who receives regular jail updates, the inmate cases of COVID-19 doubled every two days last week.
Nine were reported last Monday, 18 on Wednesday and 37 by Friday, Tully said. Almost a dozen more cases surfaced over the weekend. Since March, nine of the jail’s detention officers also have tested positive.
By Wednesday, due to inmate transfers and releases, the number of active cases had fallen to 33, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office said. No inmates or staff have died or been hospitalized due to the disease.
In recent statements, Sheriff Garry McFadden said the higher virus numbers result in part from increased testing of new jail inmates while reflecting the ongoing COVID-19 spike in both Carolinas.
Tully says that the county’s criminal justice system should redouble its efforts to further reduce the inmate population.
“There is certainly more that can be done and should be done,” he said. “There are still people who don’t pose the type of risk to the community that warrants them remaining locked inside that jail with an active spread of COVID-19.”
Just under 40 percent of the jail’s population is made up of defendants awaiting trial in federal court. This week, lawyers for some of them filed emergency motions asking that their clients be freed until their trials.
While judges in the federal Western District of North Carolina routinely have rescheduled court hearings due to pandemic-related concerns, they have rejected all requests for inmates being released on house detention based on similar fears, according to Frank Johns, the federal clerk of court.
Nonetheless, Charlotte attorney Reggie McKnight filed an emergency custody motion late Tuesday for Brittany Cowick, who faces federal drug-conspiracy charges. Cowick, 24, is 7 months pregnant and should be released to live with her mother in Lenoir until her trial, her attorney said.
“I gotta ask,” McKnight told the Observer before the filing. “This is an extraordinarily rapid spike of cases at the jail, and it’s the thing that everyone has been terrified about from the beginning, a spread of disease within a confined area.
“My client is clearly in the at-risk category. I think the courts should consider it.”
Meanwhile, a sworn statement from a Mecklenburg inmate filed in federal court offers a chilling first-hand account of the pandemic’s spread.
Joseph Soldano, facing federal child pornography charges, has been jailed since December. On Monday, his attorney, Mark Foster of Charlotte, asked the courts to place Soldano on house arrest due to the surge of illness among his fellow inmates.
In an affidavit filed with Foster’s motion, the 44-year-old Soldano describes prisoners around him who were shivering, wheezing and vomiting up blood.
The jail’s occupants, he said, are kept in their cells all day except for two 15-minute breaks. Food arrives through a trap door in the cell. Lately, according to the affidavit, there’s been a jail-wide shortage of soap.
Soldano describes one inmate housed in the same jail pod “who asked me to call his wife to let her know he was sick. His face was white, he was shivering and he could barely stand.”
Elsewhere, according to the affidavit, “the inmate in Cell 44 began coughing and vomiting after returning from video visitation with his girlfriend. Later, after he ate dinner, he got sick and began coughing up blood as he walking up the stairs in our pod.”
Soldano is housed next to Dontay Armstrong, who also has asked the courts to release him due to the jail-wide outbreak of COVID-19.
Armstrong’s attorney, Noell Tin of Charlotte, told the Observer that he learned Monday night his client also has tested positive for the disease, the second among his five jail clients to do so.
He said he hopes the spiraling number of cases in the state’s largest jail “can be an inflection point for the courts.”
“I think everybody was very surprised by the spike. Forty-eight cases, that’s a big deal. And it’s only going to get worse.”
‘Case by case’
The jump in inmate infections tracks what’s happening outside the cell bars. On Tuesday, North Carolina set a new record for hospitalizations for COVID-19. Thirty people died, raising the state’s overall fatality total to 1,820.
Whether the jail outbreak will persuade the courts to temporarily release defendants from pre-trial detention remains to be seen.
In response to an Observer inquiry about the outbreak of COVID-19 at the jail, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, which prosecutes cases in federal court, said “We will continue to respond to motions filed by defense counsel based on the facts of each particular case.”
On Monday, the office officially opposed — for the second time — Armstrong’s request to be released on bond due to the pandemic.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Kaufman argued in his filing that while Armstrong can cite the increase in COVID cases at the jail and his own medical problems, “he does not cite any change in his own health since the courts denied his last pleadings.”
On Tuesday, Tin fired back.
“In a nutshell, the government’s position is that a detainee confined in COVID-infested conditions has no grounds for relief at all — he must actually contract the disease to be considered for bail. Unfortunately, Mr. Armstrong has done just that,” he said in his filing.
On Tuesday, Kaufman also opposed the release of Brittany Cowick, saying the court was aware at her initial June 25 detention hearing of her pregnancy, the pandemic and “the likelihood that there would be positive COVID-19 cases at the jail.”
“Therefore,” Kaufman added, “there is not a basis for reconsidering the earlier order (to jail her before trial).”
U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger of Asheville, who took over as chief judge of the Western District in June, said Tuesday that he first learned of the Mecklenburg jail COVID outbreak on Friday. He said the six detention facilities serving the Asheville federal courthouse have had no cases of the illness up to now.
Asked how the federal courts will react to new requests for inmate releases for health reasons, Reidinger told The Observer there will be no blanket policy and that the judges assigned to each case will decide “how the law applies.”
“Each of these concerns will be addressed on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
‘A scary situation’
Back in Mecklenburg, early releases and reduced misdemeanor arrests since spring have cut the average daily jail population by about 200. Chief District Judge Elizabeth Trosch said judges, police and prosecutors must remain vigilant to keep the numbers there.
One way of doing that, she said, is “ensuring that those who do not need to be cycled through the jail are not brought to the jail.”
According to the jail’s daily report for Monday, however, 82 inmates were being held there before trial on misdemeanor, or relatively minor, charges.
More than 725 are awaiting trial on more serious felony charges at a time the N.C. courts have stopped criminal jury trials until at least October. Trials for the 521 federal defendants being held in the Mecklenburg jail have resumed, but only recently and at a trickle.
Charlotte attorney Tim Emry, a leader in the “Decarcerate Mecklenburg” effort, said the rising COVID numbers within the jail corroborate what attorneys and families have been hearing for weeks. They also demand action, he said.
“We need the county government to ensure everyone is tested at jail,” Emry told the Observer on Monday. “We need Charlotte-Mecklenburg police to stop arresting for misdemeanors. And we need the District Attorney’s Office and the judges to start a mass-release program.”
According to McFadden’s statement, about 45 people enter the jail each day. They are screened for COVID symptoms, then quarantined and monitored for two weeks. In-person visitation at the facility has been banned since March, the statement says.
Recently, the jail began mass testing of quarantined inmates. “We have seen a corresponding increase in positive cases,” according to the office statement.
Up in Pod 4,100, Soldano and Armstrong now await the outcome of their requests for release. Both men suffer from chronic medical conditions, according to court filings, which put them at greater risk of contracting a potentially deadly form of COVID-19.
“The mood in the pod is tense and fearful, especially for older inmates like myself and Mr. Armstrong,” Soldano wrote in his affidavit. “I have heard Mr. Armstrong coughing and wheezing. We both have severe diarrhea. I have also seen him with aches and pains and shivering cold.
“We try to support each other and help each other out. We talk when we don’t feel well and ask each other if we are OK. It is our way of dealing with a scary situation.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 10:10 AM.
