Andrew Dalack
speaker
33 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Andrew Dalack’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
to keep Mr. Chavez and anybody else who did not otherwise present a risk of flight or a danger to the community while on bail from going to MDC Brooklyn pending sentencing. So it was really a landmark and watershed decision, and it's really done.
It's given a lot of other judges in the eastern and southern districts of New York considerable cover to say, look, we agree with Judge Ferman's very sound reasoning and logic. And again, where there's not a compelling argument that, And the judge agreed with you, sided with you. Did the prison respond to your critiques?
The jail didn't respond itself, but in our papers, we actually cited to a letter that was sent out by one of the union representatives for the correctional officers working at MDC Brooklyn, in which the union representative herself criticized the conditions and criticized the lack of staffing and the lack of resources and implored the authorities at the facility to do something about it before more people get hurt.
So it's hard for me to speak to each individual's experience, but I'm confident that no matter who you are or where you're being held in MDC Brooklyn, it is an extremely challenging place. And again, what makes it so challenging is that it's essentially like a black hole.
So if you have an emergency medical issue, if your blood sugar is too high and you're a diabetic or you have some sort of a heart attack or a medical emergency, there's absolutely no guarantees that you're going to be receiving medical care.
I've heard horror stories from clients where one of their cellmates has collapsed and they're banging on their cell door during a lockdown, begging for a correctional officer to come and intervene, and nobody comes for minutes. And again, I'm not saying that's because people in the MDC Brooklyn don't care. I'm just saying there's not enough of them there.
And it shouldn't be the case that while you're awaiting trial on serious federal charges, that you also have to be worried, am I going to make it out of here alive? Or am I going to make it out of here without being, you know, stabbed or beaten?
Dealing with a federal criminal case is stressful enough, and having to sort of deal with all the other atmospherics at MDC Brooklyn makes it truly unbearable. If I could just sort of say as a side note too, as a lawyer, you can imagine how terribly frustrating and difficult it is to come to the jail, to meet with our clients, to try and discuss with them,
you know, very complicated and difficult aspects of their case and to ask them to engage with us on making, you know, very consequential decisions about their lives when all they want to talk about is the terrible conditions that they're forced to endure inside the jail. Conditions that I don't really have any control over.
They become so focused on the terrible conditions that they're experiencing in MDC Brooklyn that they are not in the position to really think clearly and contribute meaningfully to their defense on their federal criminal case.
I have two responses to that, primarily. The first is the vast majority of the people who were held at MDC Brooklyn have not been convicted of anything. They're presumed innocent. And that presumption of innocence doesn't mean anything if we're going to put them in a place and say, well, there's reason to believe that you committed a crime and so now you deserve to be punished extraordinarily.
That's not how the American criminal system works. That's just not a way that other human beings should be treated. Everybody's life at MDC Brooklyn matters equally, certainly matters to the people who love and care about them. And we need to be treating those human lives with dignity. So, you know, it's just not a tolerable situation.
And unfortunately, until there's more political will to really implement... more meaningful reforms at the jail and address the chronic understaffing, the intransigence, the lack of adequate medical care, all these issues that we've been discussing today, it's going to remain a hellhole.
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