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Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), is one of the main detention centers for persons awaiting trial on federal charges in the New York City area. About 1,600 persons are held at MDC. Because persons held at MDC have not been convicted, they need to meet regularly with their attorneys in order to prepare for trial, a right assured by the Sixth Amendment. Although MDC’s stated policy is to allow attorney visits between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., it regularly cancels this access without notice and for dubious reasons such as “staffing issues.”
Beginning on January 28, 2019, MDC announced wholesale cancellation of attorney visits for days and failed to provide adequate explanation for barring defense attorneys access to their clients. It was later revealed that individuals at the detention center had, during the period of no access to their lawyers, been left in the dark and without medical, commissary and other services as a result of an electrical fire and power outage at MDC. Federal Defenders, an organization dedicated to ensuring that the accused have access to legal counsel, sought information about the conditions at MDC and demanded that lawyer access to clients be restored. MDC officials insisted conditions at the jail were fine, but when they were forced to allow a Federal Defenders attorney access to the facility under a court order, the attorney found the conditions to be deplorable: individuals were being detained in darkened cells, some had not had food for days, and the facility was painfully cold.
Federal Defenders filed a lawsuit alleging that the restrictions on its attorneys’ access to clients at MDC violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee to assistance of counsel. However, the district court dismissed the claim, ruling that attorneys do not have legal standing to enforce the constitutional right to counsel. In its amicus brief supporting the appeal before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, The Rutherford Institute and its coalition partners argue that the district court’s ruling conflicts with the historic power of federal courts to order that federal officials stop violating the Constitution and is a dangerous precedent that could prevent courts from assuring that all constitutional rights are obeyed by government officers.
The brief in Federal Defenders of N.Y. v. Federal Bureau of Prisons is available at www.rutherford.org.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
This press release is also available at www.rutherford.org.
Source: https://bit.ly/2ZIhMPr
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