Donald H. Specter

As the coronavirus spread rapidly through the state's prison system, Specter, the executive director of the nonprofit public interest Prison Law Office, took action to find relief for endangered inmates.

"It was overwhelming the first few weeks," he said. "I was working 12 to 13 hours a day." Alongside him was a diligent staff of nine lawyers plus four investigators. At a contentious federal court hearing conducted by telephone in early April he and colleague Sara L. Norman, backed by attorneys from Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP repeatedly warned that penal institutions were a ticking time bomb that would spill beyond the walls and razor wire into communities.

They were right. By July, an outbreak at San Quentin was filling hospital beds in Marin County; more than a thousand inmates had been infected. A correctional officer died and fears spread that prison staff would carry contagion to their homes and surroundings.

Specter and opposing counsel from the state's corrections agency debated the crisis before a three-judge panel that oversees prison reform efforts. Chief Judge Kimberly J. Mueller of Sacramento is in charge of the decades-old prisoner mental health rights suit Coleman v. Newsom, 2:90-cv-00520 (E.D. Cal., filed April 23, 1990). U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tiger of San Francisco has a related case over prison health care, Plata v. Newsom, 4:01-cv-01351 (N.D. Cal., filed April 5, 2001). And Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals completes the panel, created in 2007 to address chronic prison overcrowding; its authority was affirmed in 2009 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The panel told state officials to get their act together. "It is likely that only through significant effort will California's prisons be able to minimize the spread of Covid-19," the judges wrote. Mueller went farther in a separate opinion calling for inmate releases as a last resort.

But the panel's response hasn't much helped, Specter said, faulting both the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and a court-appointed receiver charged with improving inmate health care. "Overall, they've been slow to implement CDC guidelines," he said referring to the federal Centers for Disease Control. "It was a self-inflicted disaster at San Quentin: no isolation, no treatment. It may have cost as many as 25 lives so far."

His job is to accelerate protections for inmates, he said. "We're pushing hard for testing on those incarcerated and staff. It defies logic, but the receiver took a hands-off approach to staff testing. If you are in prison, it is really risky to be medically vulnerable or too old."

Specter spoke in mid-August, ahead of another hearing. "If a staff member comes to the gate with symptoms, they're just sent home without a test," he said. "And we have no order from the court yet."

-- 5John Roemer