Government leaker Reality Leigh Winner sought reprieve Wednesday from “dangerous” and “dire” prison conditions that resulted in her recently contracting the novel coronavirus.
Winner, an Air Force veteran and former intelligence contractor, said inmates at the federal medical prison where she is incarcerated are being denied access to over-the-counter medication to try to fight COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus that has infected herself and hundreds of others serving time at the same facility in Fort Worth, Texas.
She also said that mattresses slept on by sick prisoners subsequently removed from the facility, FMC Carswell, are eventually reused without ever being sanitized.
Winner alleged those conditions in a declaration sent from prison to one of her lawyers dated July 21 and included in a filing entered the following day in federal court.
Attorneys for Winner propose the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals consider her COVID-19 diagnosis and the conditions described in her declaration in determining if she has met her burden to show “extraordinary and compelling” reasons exist to move forward with her request to be granted compassion release and let out of prison earlier than anticipated.
Winner, 28, pleaded guilty in 2018 to one count of transmitting national defense information related to leaking a document about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and was sentenced to 63 months imprisonment.
She requested compassionate release in April, arguing that factors including her history of bulimia nervosa have made her particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, but that bid was ultimately denied by a district court judge.
Her lawyers appealed that ruling in the 11th Circuit, where Winner’s declaration was included in a letter sent from prison to one of her attorneys on Tuesday after she was told she tested positive for COVID-19. That declaration is included in an exhibit attached to an emergency motion in support of the appeal her legal time filed the next day.
“The situation in FMC Carswell is dire,” Winner wrote her lawyer. “We are not allowed access to the prison store to purchase basic hygiene supplies to attempt to battle the virus on our own,” she continued, adding the mattresses of sick former prisoners were left stacked in the center of her unit until last week and “reused without opportunity to sanitize by incoming positive inmates placed in the unit upon testing positive.”
Approximately 500 prisoners at FMC Carswell have tested positive for COVID-19 as of this week, Winner noted. Inmates at the facility are “all on different phases of the virus,” she added, predicting the prison’s population “may never test negative fully at this rate.”
“For the reasons set for in my compassionate release request, the situation at FMC Carswell is dangerous; COVID-19 infections are exploding amongst the inmates and I, in particular, am susceptible to severe health consequences,” Winner wrote.
The Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on Winner’s concerns when reached by The Washington Times.
“While we do not comment on a specific inmate’s conditions of confinement or pending litigation, we can share that we are deeply concerned for the health and welfare of those inmates who are entrusted to our care and it is our highest priority to continue to do everything we can to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in our facilities,” the Bureau of Prisons told The Times.
Winner’s sentence is currently set to end in November 2021. The Department of Justice previously said it opposes releasing her early.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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