Compassionate Release Practicum to Help Terminally Ill Inmates Seek Relief

Available in spring 2019, BU Law students in the new experiential course will engage in direct representation and develop solutions in this new and rapidly evolving area of law.

Alexander Phillips, an inmate at the medium-security prison in Norfolk, Mass., was the first person released under a new statute offering medical parole for terminally ill or incapacitated inmates. He suffered from stage four metastatic cancer, and was released to the care of his mother in early November. He passed away at home 24 days later, comforted not to be chained to a bed.

Massachusetts is one of the last states to offer this type of relief. The statute was folded into an omnibus criminal justice reform bill passed in April 2018. Since its passage, litigating the statute has been a complex and convoluted process. In spite of the language of the provision, which makes release for qualifying prisoners mandatory, Phillips’s first petition was denied. It took six months of litigation to secure his release.

His attorney, Ruth Greenberg, a lecturer in the Boston University School of Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic, promised him she would continue to fight for the protections of the compassionate release statute in his honor. “BU was the right place to do it,” Greenberg says, “because he was very grateful for the opportunity to be in the BU Prison Education Program. It changed his life.”

With that in mind, Greenberg approached Associate Dean for Experiential Education Peggy Maisel and they began to develop the Compassionate Release Practicum. Available in the spring 2019 semester, the new experiential course is designed to engage students in direct representation of inmates not otherwise entitled to counsel. Students will meet with inmates and collect records, prepare and file petitions for release, and litigate petitions that are denied at the Suffolk County Superior Court.

Due to the backlog of prisoners in Massachusetts who may qualify for release, and because the practicum will work to educate the Department of Corrections (DOC) about its obligations under the statute, reinforcing the provision will require a “flood of litigation,” Greenberg notes.

“The DOC itself can identify and file the petition on behalf of qualified inmates… but it’s a huge amount of work that the statute didn’t fund,” she says. Further, while many people in this population have family to return to, others will need help finding housing and care. Greenberg hopes the practicum can help the DOC understand how those needs will be met, and that the services of the students—offered free of charge—will ease the administrative and financial burden of the care of these inmates.

Since compassionate release is a new area of law for Massachusetts, students will have the opportunity to engage with the legislative process as it plays out in real time. “This is one of the few places where students will engage in an entirely new area of law in Massachusetts,” Greenberg says. “It is a law that is still subject to debate—amendments have been proposed, lobbying is happening, the state house will be active, and Governor Baker has taken a personal interest.”

Ultimately, students will be helping ill and incapacitated inmates find the relief they are entitled to. “What the students will learn, I think, is the power of their degree,” Greenberg says. “They will be able, in a six-month period, to obtain freedom for somebody. I hope that will be a very rewarding thing. It certainly will be rewarding for the clients.”

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