EFTA00138799¶
Mail Attachment¶
Maureen Baird - 30.08.19 - Further Report - Epstein.pdf¶
SDNY_00016890 Page 11768¶
Page 288¶
EFTA00138800¶
August 22, 2019¶
Report of Suicide of High Profile Inmate at MCC New York¶
Provided by Maureen Baird at the request of¶
Amirah Ajaz, Solicitor, ABV Solicitors¶
Jeffrey Epstein, a high profile, pre-trial inmate, Southern District of New York, was found unresponsive in his cell at MCC New York on August 10, 2019, at approximately 6:40 am. A short time later, he was taken to an outside community hospital where he was pronounced dead. His death was ruled been a suicide by hanging following an autopsy which was performed by the New York Medical Examiner. Two investigations, to be conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Office of Inspector General(OIG), were ordered by United States Attorney General (AG), William Barr and are currently ongoing.¶
At a press conference held on Monday, August 11, 2019, AG Barr stated, “the Department of Justice is learning about those “deeply concerning” irregularities at the MCC New York. I was appalled – and indeed the whole Department was – and frankly angry to learn of the MCC’s failure to adequately secure this prisoner.” AG Barr further commented, “Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered.” On Tuesday, August 12, 2019, AG Barr directed the Warden of MCC be reassigned to the Bureau of Prisons Northeast Regional Office and two other MCC employees, who had been assigned to Mr. Epstein’s housing unit (9-South-Special Housing Unit), were placed on Administrative Leave. A Justice Department spokesperson stated “Additional actions may be taken as the circumstances warrant.”¶
On August 19, 2019, AG Barr appointed a new Director and new Deputy Director to the Bureau of Prisons. The Acting Director will return to his regular duties. While it is a positive step to have these top positions filled, the concerns within the prisons remain unchanged.¶
Chronology of Events¶
July 23, 2019 - Law enforcement sources state Epstein was found unconscious in his jail cell with injuries to his neck. It was not clear if the injuries were self-inflicted as a result of a¶
1¶
SDNY_00016891¶
Page 289¶
EFTA00138801¶
suicide attempt or if he had been the victim of an assault. He was placed on Suicide Watch.¶
July 29, 2019 – Epstein is reportedly removed from Suicide Watch and returned to the Special Housing Unit (SHU), where he is placed with a cellmate. It is common practice to place inmates whose suicide watch has ended in a cell with another inmate, rather than to be housed alone. This provides some measure of safeguard. Termination of a Suicide Watch can only be made by a trained member of the Psychology Department. Dr. Chief Psychologist, MCC New York, would have been involved in the decision to terminate Epstein’s July 2019, Suicide Watch. Dr. provided a Declaration o the Court in the case of Motiwala. In this case, because of Epstein’s notoriety, it would not be uncommon to have several levels of review, to include the Warden’s input and possibly officials at a higher level. Details outlining the reasons Epstein’s Suicide Watch terminated are uncertain. In my experience, inmates are not kept on suicide watch indefinitely. A typical suicide watch would normally last two to four days.¶
If an inmate is persuasive, they can formulate an argument to talk their way off of a suicide watch and manipulate the Psychologist into believing they no longer pose a danger to themselves.¶
August 9, 2019 - Thousands of documents are unsealed in Court in connection with a defamation case against a woman accused of recruiting underage girls for Epstein. These documents revealed the names of dozens of high-profile individuals who were connected to Epstein. They allegedly indulged in parties with him and flew on his private plane. These documents included allegations of impropriety against several of these “prominent individuals.”¶
At some point on Friday, August 9, 2019, Epstein’s cellmate was moved to another location or or transferred. For reasons the investigators are still exploring, he did not receive a new cellmate. This contradicts usual protocol as Epstein should not have been in his SHU cell alone, having recently been removed from Suicide Watch.¶
The Washington Post reported in an article published on August 11, 2019, the Correctional Officers assigned that night to the SHU Unit, had not checked on Epstein for several hours before he was found hanging in his cell Saturday morning. This was just¶
2¶
SDNY_00016892¶
Page 290¶
EFTA00138802¶
one in a series of missteps in the hours leading up to his death.¶
The New York Times and Associated Press reported the Correctional Officers slept through the 30-minute required checks and then falsified records to cover that up. They cite their source as Law Enforcement Officials. Surveillance video reviewed following the incident is said to have confirmed this information.¶
Procedure and Post Orders require Officers to conduct physical checks of all inmates every 30 minutes. It has been reported by several sources that these 30-minute checks were not being conducted by either of the two staff members working that morning shift in SHU unit. Additionally, the Union President of MCC advised both staff were working overtime and one of the individuals did not normally work as a Corrections Officer. It is my understanding from a source who currently is employed at MCC that the second individual assigned to SHU that shift is employed by the Warehouse and he had volunteered to work the overtime on Friday night/Saturday morning in SHU.¶
The Union President stated that MCC is currently functioning with less than 70 percent of the needed correctional officers, forcing many to work mandatory overtime and 60 to 70 hour work weeks. The Union President went on to say in an interview, “If it wasn’t Mr. Epstein, it would have been somebody else because of the conditions at the institution. It wasn’t a matter of how it happened or it happening, but it was only a matter of time for it to happen. It was inevitable. Our Staff is severely overworked.”¶
August 9-10, 2019¶
According to several sources, Correctional Officers assigned to SHU did not check on Epstein for several hours, despite policy requiring physical checks of all SHU inmates every 30 minutes. Both staff were working overtime at the understaffed facility. One of the Officers was mandated to work the overtime and the Warehouse Employee volunteered to work the overtime in the midst of an 80-hour work week.¶
August 10, 2019¶
SDNY_00016893¶
3¶
Page 291¶
EFTA00138803¶
Epstein is found unconscious/unresponsive in his cell. He is later pronounced dead from an apparent suicide. Further it has been reported that Epstein committed suicide by hanging with the use of a bed sheet.¶
August 11, 2019¶
The investigations begin and the autopsy is performed. It is anticipated it will be several days before any official information is reported.¶
SDNY_00016894¶
4¶
Page 292¶
EFTA00138804¶
Conditions of Confinement at MCC New York¶
Aviva Stahl, an Investigative New York Journalist, has extensively covered conditions of confinement at MCC New York over the last several years. Much of what she claims have recently been reported by numerous media outlets. The following excerpts were written by Ms. Stahl and published August 2019, in the Columbia Journalism Review and June 2018, in the Gothamist. Additional excerpts from the June 2018 and August 2019 publications of the Gothamist, of former inmates of MCC, Attorneys, Prison Experts, Professors and other sources are also provided in the following section.¶
“WHEN I AWOKE LAST SATURDAY to the news of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, I realized that the moment had come: the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), the federal prison where he died, was about to get its fifteen minutes of fame. As a freelance investigative reporter who frequently covers the prison system, I’d spent years trying to pitch stories about that facility, often without success. Last summer, I managed to publish an investigation into conditions at the MCC on the website, Gothamist. The story documented that MCC was overcrowded and understaffed, plagued by vermin and overflowing toilets, dogged by allegations of corruption and abuse, and beset by an almost total lack of medical care. None of that got much attention at the time. But as soon as news of Epstein’s death started circulating, so did my piece.”¶
“There are no advocacy groups focused on improving conditions at federal prisons, in large part because there aren’t really any elected officials responsible for safeguarding these institutions. Congress is technically charged with overseeing the Bureau of Prisons, but Congress is busy. And because federal institutions hold individuals from across the country, federal prisoners don’t form a natural constituency, or represent a single newspaper readership.”¶
June 19, 2018¶
5¶
SDNY_00016895¶
Page 293¶
EFTA00138805¶
“Half a block behind Manhattan’s federal courthouse, two blocks from City Hall, three blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge, and less than a mile from the hustle-and-bustle of Wall Street, sits a detention center that has been condemned by a United Nations human rights expert for exposing its inmates to conditions akin to torture.¶
While reports of the horrendous conditions on Rikers Island helped spur Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pledge to shutter the jail’s violence-plagued facilities, far less attention has been paid to the environment inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail which mainly holds people who have been charged but not yet convicted of crimes, who in the eyes of the law are still presumed innocent.¶
Yet those locked up at the MCC are subject to their own indignities and rights violations, say those who have spent time there on both sides of the bars. These include filthy conditions, vermin infestations, substandard medical care, and violence and abuse at the hands of guards. Interviews with a dozen people who have spent time locked up there as recently as 2017, as well as with attorneys who have represented clients at MCC, human rights groups, and others with direct knowledge of the prison, confirm that those incarcerated at MCC often endure a rat-infested, high-rise hell just yards from the federal courts that send them there.¶
“I thought there was nowhere worse than Rikers Island,” Melvin Rodriguez, who spent three weeks at MCC, told Gothamist. In October 2016, Rodriguez was arrested in the Bronx on federal charges for selling drugs to a confidential informant, as part of the largest gang raid in New York City history.¶
Rodriguez said the bug and rodent infestation at MCC was particularly horrifying. “The cells [are] very small and at nighttime you hear the mouses, see waterbugs in the shower,” he told Gothamist. At least one former MCC prisoner said the mice would find their way into commissary boxes, and gnaw away at their food.¶
“You asked about the conditions,” wrote Ricardo Stewart, another young man indicted as part of the Bronx gang raid. “We saw rats so big it seemed like they could only be in the sewer.”¶
“But they wasn’t in the streets or the sewers,” Stewart added.¶
SDNY_00016896¶
6¶
Page 294¶
EFTA00138806¶
“They were more like roommates.”¶
In a special jail-within-a-jail called 10 South, alleged terrorists, mobsters and drug kingpins are subject to some of the most brutal conditions of solitary confinement in the nation. This extreme isolation, reserved for those charged with the most heinous crimes, was described as “a punitive measure that is unworthy of the United States as a civilized democracy,” according to a former special monitor on torture and punishment for the United Nations who investigated the case of one prisoner held there for three years.”¶
“Hundreds of people indicted in the Southern District of New York, as well as many individuals indicted in the Eastern District, based in Brooklyn’s federal court across the river, end up at the jail awaiting trial for federal offenses including drug-related crimes, fraud, bribery, and sex offenses. Defendants facing terrorism charges have spent more than three years at the facility, attorneys say. But even those facing less high-profile charges generally spend at least one or two years there before their criminal cases are resolved.”¶
New York attorney Joshua Dratel, who has represented clients at the notorious U.S. facility at Guantanamo, says “in some regards, MCC—particularly 10 South — is worse.” Dratel said he has represented nearly a dozen people who have served time on 10 South, and countless others in MCC. He describes the prison as “soul-negating.”¶
“It’s physically, mentally, psychologically, emotionally—as unaccommodating to the idea of being human as any place I’ve been,” Dratel told Gothamist.¶
Bruce Barket, a New York Attorney who has visited clients at MCC described the institution as “infested with rats and mold.” He went on to state, “The Facility is run with a bad combination of laziness and cruelty,” citing the Epstein death is one of the results. He describes the Special Housing Unit as “a place where an inmate sits in a box and stares at the wall.”¶
Jeanne Thesharis is a Distinguished Professor of Political¶
SDNY_00016897¶
7¶
Page 295¶
EFTA00138807¶
Science at Brooklyn College who has written extensively about conditions at MCC.¶
“If I described these conditions to you–filthy, freezing, no natural light, isolation so extreme that you’re punished for speaking through the walls, absurd rules like prisoners not getting to see the newspapers unless they’re 30 days old, secrecy so deep that people are force-fed and lawyers can be punished for describing the conditions their clients are experiencing–you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was Iran or Russia,” she said.¶
“But in fact this gulag exists right here in lower Manhattan.”¶
Andrew Laufer, a civil rights attorney who has filed several lawsuits challenging conditions at the BOP’s two federal jails in New York City, recalled suing the BOP on behalf of a prisoner at MCC who had had his fingertip chopped off by a cell door. Rather than being placed in an ambulance, alleges Laufer, the man was chained at his ankles and wrists and brought to the hospital by correctional officers, bleeding profusely.¶
“I think it’s a human rights violation,” Laufer says of the medical care at MCC. “I think it’s an Eighth Amendment violation—deliberate indifference.”¶
In the past 15 years, at least one correctional officer at MCC has been convicted of beating an inmate, and at least three guards have been convicted of sexually assaulting inmates. In 2016, a former correctional officer at MCC was sentenced to seven years for raping an inmate. Most recently a former MCC Staff Member was convicted of taking bribes to smuggle food, alcohol and cellphones into the facility.¶
In a 2011 letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder, Amnesty International expressed concern that conditions on 10 South “fall short of international standards for humane treatment” and “appear incompatible with the presumption of innocence.” The brutal nature of life on the unit, including its extreme conditions of isolation, were also documented in a 2014 Human¶
8¶
SDNY_00016898¶
Page 296¶
EFTA00138808¶
Rights Watch Report, about human rights abuses in US terrorism prosecutions.¶
During his six-year term as the UN Special Rapporteur for Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which ended in October 2016, the BOP prevented Juan Méndez from speaking to suspected or convicted terrorists. Méndez was able to investigate the conditions at 10 South by interviewing family members of the incarcerated and contacting the State Department about the allegations. He ultimately determined that international human rights protections had been violated.¶
While there has been increasing advocacy for reforms to local jail and prison conditions, federal prisons remain a kind of political orphan, a situation compounded in the Trump era.¶
“Rikers is a good example of the power of people in a democracy to hold their elected officials accountable,” said Fettig, “but in the federal context—federal facilities house people from all around the country, and so there’s no natural constituency in the state, city, county they’re located in” to express concern about what’s happening on the inside.¶
As a result, for people locked up at MCC, there’s little hope that conditions will improve anytime soon.¶
That could be exactly the way jailers and prosecutors want it. Pre-trial detention, which often lasts years, can become not only unsafe, but coercive; as a result, individuals are pressured to provide information to prosecutors or accept plea deals in their desperation to be released, say former prisoners.¶
“You want to plead guilty and get out of this dump to a prison,” said Nicky, the former inmate. “The feds have a 98% conviction rate for a reason,” Melvin Rodriguez, another former prisoner said. “They mentally break you.”¶
Asked why he thought MCC has received so much less coverage than Rikers, Rodriguez replied, “I think [MCC] went unnoticed because people think just because it’s the feds the conditions are better. There are certain things that go on in these places that the government covers so the public would never know.”¶
9¶
SDNY_00016899¶
Page 297¶
EFTA00138809¶
But for years, MCC has been plagued by filthy conditions, abusive guards, and a severe lack of medical care, as Gothamist documented in an extensive investigation last year. Defense attorneys, former inmates, and others with direct knowledge of conditions at MCC said Epstein’s death epitomized how all individuals, even the most infamous people on the planet, are treated in the facility.¶
Susan Kellman has been working as a federal defense attorney and representing clients at MCC for about 30 years, and described the MCC’s recent condition as “the worst that it’s ever been.”¶
Kellman said that one of her clients, a young man, has been in the Special Housing Unit—the unit where Epstein died—for the three and a half years.¶
“His entire window is covered in mold,” she said, and because the hot and cold water in the cell come out of different taps, her client can’t even take a shower without getting frozen or scorched.¶
She recalled that she’d had one client at the facility who was charged with observing and safeguarding suicidal prisoners, since there weren’t enough correctional officers to do the job.¶
“So they have inmates patrolling the suicide block so that they keep an eye on the people rather than people [who] get paid by the government doing it,” Kellman said. “Do they really care? Do they watch? Who knows!”¶
Kellman described a third client who suffers from mental health issues as well as severe asthma, but has been unable to get the nebulizer treatment she says she needs to control the disease. During one visit, Kellman said her client’s breathing was so labored she couldn’t carry on a conversation: “I couldn’t talk to her, because she couldn’t breathe.”¶
Over the spring, Gothamist was in touch with two women held at the facility, who said they were denied basic medical care, and that their cells routinely flooded with sewage.¶
“Toilet waste and feces were all over the floors of all the cells, common area, and other departments on the floor and the female inmates were the ones who had to clean it all up without proper equipment,” one detainee wrote in a message. The woman, whose name is being withheld at her request out of fear of¶
10¶
SDNY_00016900¶
Page 298¶
EFTA00138810¶
retaliation, described how her floormates got feces on “their hands, legs, faces, hair, all over” and said the “difficulty breathing due to the smell was and is indescribable.”¶
Kellman said that it makes little difference to the Correctional Officers at MCC whether an inmate is a billionaire financier or not—everyone is regarded with disdain. “[The prisoners would] be lucky if they were treated like dirt under somebody else’s shoe, but they’re not even treated that well.”¶
These conditions persist at MCC despite the fact that people held there have not yet been convicted of a crime, and thus are supposed to benefit from the presumption of innocence.¶
The following excerpt was taken from an article published in the Intercept, February 3, 2019, edition, written by Martin Gottesfeld, an inmate incarcerated in the 10 South Unit of MCC New York.¶
“AT THE TAIL end of the Obama administration, I was locked up a stone’s throw away from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ infamous Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, or MCC NY, in downtown Manhattan, where Guzmán is currently being held during his ongoing federal trial. I was there writing and waging a hunger strike when El Chapo first arrived. Much has been written about El Chapo’s trial, but close to nothing about the conditions of his confinement, as the security around him has made access off limits to any journalist other than me.”¶
I’m an imprisoned human rights activist and political journalist focusing on protecting institutionalized children from common tortures in America like these:¶
I’m currently suing the Bureau of Prisons and MCC NY for both state and federal civil rights violations, related to the conditions where El Chapo is held, and I’m exploring classaction certification. My lawsuit against MCC NY offers a new and rare glimpse into prison life in the solitary confinement cells that El Chapo has now called home for nearly two years. Besides simply recovering my fees and costs, however, my goals aren’t¶
11¶
SDNY_00016901¶
page 299¶
EFTA00138811¶
financial. Instead I’m asking the court to force MCC NY to respect human dignity, the First Amendment, federal regulations, and other human and civil rights.”¶
In a letter written from MCC to officials at the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Department, Mr. Gottesfield calls attention to what he describes as appalling conditions inside the facility.¶
In his letter, he alleges there are severe threats to health, including rodent and insect infestations at the facility. “Roaches are found in the food, and I have personally observed insect eggs as well,” Gottesfeld adds.¶
He describes how the heat is, for the most part, not functioning during the winter. A number of the cells are in the “50-degree range while others are much colder.” Meanwhile, pools of water stand in the facility from leaks and are a “breeding ground for infections.”¶
“The facility itself is trash, with cockroach-infested meal trays and frigid, leaky cells. One inmate resorted to drinking from his toilet when the water was shut off.”¶
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding the 10-South unit at MCC where El Chapo is being housed. Much of that is fueled by the effects of it being a “SAMs” or “special administrative measures” unit. As such, the inmates aren’t supposed to come into any visual or other contact with other inmates.¶
Even magazines they receive in the mail must be prescreened by the FBI for the supposed reason of intercepting hidden messages. Outbound communications are similarly restricted and monitored in real time.¶
Amnesty International¶
Amnesty International previously condemned the use of MCC to “house pretrial detainees in solitary confinement for months or even years before they face trial.” With regards to the Special Housing Unit at MCC, the human rights organization says “detainees have little access to natural light and no provision for outdoor exercise.” Amnesty International characterized¶
12¶
SDNY_00016902¶
page 300¶
EFTA00138812¶
“the combined effects of prolonged confinement to sparse cells with little natural light, no outdoor exercise and extreme social isolation amount[ing] to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”¶
United States Representative Nydia Velazquez - August 1, 2018 and August 14, 2019¶
August 1, 2018 - A federal lawmaker is demanding officials running a prison in lower Manhattan detail how long it takes for those in the lockup to get medical care.¶
U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez is demanding answers as allegations of abuse continue to surface at the Metropolitan Correctional Center some prisoner advocates have compared to a gulag. “When inmates are placed at the mercy of our government, we have a moral responsibility to ensure they are treated humanely, something which MCC has allegedly failed to do,” Velasquez said in a statement. “I am asking for a full explanation and immediate steps to ensure the safety of prisoners housed there.” On Wednesday, she sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Prisons citing “alarming conditions” at the prison which houses highprofiled terrorists and drug lord Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman. The missive demands the number of violent incidents as well as the time it typically takes for prisoners to receive medical care.¶
The allegations of abuse, including prisoners forced to wait two months to be seen by a doctor, were first reported in Gothamist. Prison advocates have long argued that the facility is more restrictive than the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.¶
August 14, 2019 - Rep. Nydia Velázquez on Wednesday joined the growing number of officials calling for a soup-to-nuts investigation into the apparent suicide of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.¶
13¶
SDNY_00016903¶
Page 301¶
EFTA00138813¶
Velázquez said she wrote a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general and the head of the FBI demanding answers not only about Epstein’s death but about what she called other rampant abuses of detainees at the lockup.¶
“I write to voice concerns about the continued alleged culture of mismanagement and inadequate leadership at this facility,” she said. She cited several other incidents at the MCC, in which corrections staff allegedly abused detainees.¶
Representative Velasquez posted the following on her Facebook Social Media account on August 14, 2019: “MCC is in our District, #NY7. I’ve been pressing for greater oversight of this institution for many years now!”¶
“Not only does Epstein’s suicide raise questions about how his custody was handled, but it hearkens back to a litany of previous problems we’ve seen at this facility,” Velazquez told The News.¶
“I’m glad DOJ and FBI are looking into this most recent episode and all of us, including his victims, need to know how Epstein died,” she added. “Still, I think what’s also needed is a comprehensive review of the culture and management problems at MCC.”¶
Conclusion/Opinions/Observations¶
MCC New York, like many other Federal Prisons nationwide is overpopulated and understaffed. It is reported the MCC was built to accommodate 474 inmates. On the day of Mr. Epstein’s suicide, the prison’s inmate population count was 763, almost twice the number it was designed to house.¶
Much talk and attention has been on the staffing shortages. Mainly, as a result of the 2017 Trump Administration Hiring Freeze, the Bureau of Prisons lost 7,300 employees.¶
MCC New York was recently described by Attorney General William Barr as an institution with “deeply concerning irregularities.” AG Barr expressed outrage and says he was “appalled and angry” to learn of MCC’s “failure to adequately secure this prisoner.” Other sources familiar with current conditions at MCC described it as “deplorable,” and “bordering on inhumane treatment.”¶
14¶
SDNY_00016904¶
page 302¶
EFTA00138814¶