San Quentin must release or transfer half its prisoners because of lack of COVID care, court rules

Finding that state officials have acted with “deliberate indifference” to the health of prisoners at San Quentin — where 75% of them have tested positive for the coronavirus and 28 have died — a state appeals court took the unprecedented step Tuesday of ordering at least half of the prison’s 2,900 inmates transferred or released.

The failure to take proper safety measures at the 168-year-old prison is “morally indefensible and constitutionally untenable,” said the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. The court said San Quentin inmates, many of them elderly or medically vulnerable, could be relocated to other prisons or correctional facilities with safer conditions or granted early parole.

Read the full article as it originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle