ACLU: Documents Show Federal Executions Likely Caused Prison COVID-19 Outbreak

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act show that the fed­er­al government’s choice to bring hun­dreds of peo­ple to the fed­er­al prison com­plex in Terre Haute, Indiana to car­ry out five exe­cu­tions in July and August in the midst of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic like­ly caused a COVID-19 out­break that has already killed three and hospitalized others.

In a state­ment issued September 21, 2020, the ACLU blast­ed fed­er­al offi­cials for repeat­ed­ly car­ry­ing out ​“super-spread­er exe­cu­tions” with no regard for the fore­see­able pub­lic health dan­gers those events cre­at­ed. ​“The government’s rush to kill has caused sense­less risk for incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple, prison staff, and every­one who lives in Terre Haute, Indiana,” ACLU Capital Punishment Project direc­tor Cassandra Stubbs (pic­tured) said.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) web­site reports that two peo­ple have died from COVID-19 at the Terre Haute prison in the last week. ​“Those deaths were part of a larg­er out­break in the wake of the fed­er­al government’s deci­sion to car­ry out an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of exe­cu­tions there these past few months dur­ing a dead­ly pan­dem­ic,” Stubbs said.

The doc­u­ments obtained in response to the ACLU’s August 6 FOIA request for infor­ma­tion on the costs and coro­n­avirus impact of the fed­er­al exe­cu­tions also show that the Department of Justice failed to take basic pre­cau­tions against the spread of the virus, the ACLU said. Just days before the three fed­er­al exe­cu­tions in July 2020, an ACLU law­suit uncov­ered infor­ma­tion that a fed­er­al Bureau of Prisons (BOP) staff mem­ber who was involved in exe­cu­tion prepa­ra­tions had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Contrary to pri­or state­ments made by the BOP, the ACLU said, that prison employ­ee had worked at the Terre Haute facil­i­ty with­out a mask. Nonetheless, the ACLU said, the doc­u­ments show that BOP failed to under­take con­tact trac­ing that was suf­fi­cient ​“to iden­ti­fy staff and pris­on­ers at risk from this reckless exposure.” 

The dis­closed doc­u­ments also revealed that the BOP failed to con­duct ade­quate test­ing to deter­mine if peo­ple known to have been in con­tact with the infect­ed prison employ­ee had also become infect­ed. Rather, the doc­u­ments showed that the BOP per­mit­ted sev­er­al staff mem­bers who were exposed to the infect­ed staff mem­ber to decline test­ing. In addi­tion, the ACLU said, “[t]he doc­u­ments show that BOP has adopt­ed a risky ​‘new pol­i­cy’ that allows infect­ed staff to return to work after just 10 days of no symp­toms, with­out being retest­ed for the virus.”

Stubbs said “[t]he new­ly dis­closed data from the Bureau of Prisons shows the total inad­e­qua­cy of its efforts to uncov­er COVID-19 infec­tions among staff and pris­on­ers.” As a result, she said, ​“the true num­ber of infec­tions is like­ly much high­er than the alarm­ing num­ber of cas­es report­ed on its website.” 

The only states to have con­duct­ed exe­cu­tions dur­ing the pan­dem­ic — Missouri and Texas — both also expe­ri­enced COVID-19 out­breaks in the weeks fol­low­ing those executions.