In a drastic reversal of a previous order denying his release, a 90-year-old man serving a life-long prison sentence for a nonviolent cannabis offense is being released this week, pointing to disparities in compassionate release across the country.
Horacio Estrada-Elias is seriously ill, serving a life sentence in federal prison for a nonviolent cannabis trafficking crime, and a judge granted compassionate release on Tuesday, according to a CNN report. He is set to be freed this week after spending more than a dozen years in prison.
“It’s a huge blessing for all of us,” his daughter Elizabeth Estrada told CNN this week. “We’re so excited for the whole family to finally be together.”
Estrada-Elias has congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation and chronic kidney disease, along with contracting COVID-19 while in prison, according to court affidavits filed by doctors. In April 2020, his prison doctor predicted that he had “less than 18 months” to live; his warden recommended his release, citing his spotless disciplinary record, writing that “he has been diagnosed with an incurable, progressive illness in which he will not recover.”
The motion was denied in July 2020, with federal Judge Danny Reeves arguing a life sentence is the “only sentence that would be appropriate.” That change last month, when an appeals court ordered Reeves to reconsider and two judges on a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote Reeves “abused [his] discretion,” ignoring that Estrada-Elias is unlikely to reoffend and “over-emphasizing” his nonviolent crimes.
Reeves issued a new opinion approving the compassionate release on Tuesday: “The defendant’s medical condition constitutes an extraordinary and compelling reason for release… when considered in conjunction with the defendant’s advanced age,” he wrote.
A CNN report from earlier this year indicates that Reeves has denied compassionate release motions for at least 90 inmates since the beginning of the pandemic. In his district, judges granted about 6 percent of compassionate release motions in 20202 and the first half of 2021, according to data released by the US Sentencing Commission. Some courts granted as low as three percent of compassionate release motions.
Elsewhere in the country, nearly 50 percent of compassionate release motions decided by the federal court in Massachusetts, and more than 60 percent decided by the court in Oregon, were approved during the same time period.
“Judges are looking at the same law and policy but interpreting it differently,” Hope Johnson, a researcher with the UCLA School of Law who’s studied compassionate release cases, told CNN. “There’s an arbitrariness in the way these decisions are being made.”
Estrada-Elias will be released from prison in Minnesota and fly to the San Diego area on Friday, according to his daughter, with plans to live with his sister. The family plans to set up a medical bed to take care of him at home.
Alison Guernsey, a University of Iowa law professor who has studied compassionate release cases, said it is uncommon for inmates who are denied compassionate release to win on appeal. She said his reversal “seems to be rooted in common sense and human dignity as opposed to legal formalities.”
Estrada-Elias was sentenced to life in prison in April 2008 after pleading guilty to a conspiracy to traffic tens of thousands of pounds of cannabis into and around the United States, and Reeves was required to give him a life sentence due to previous drug convictions.
Though, the mandatory minimum law that applied was taken off the books in 2018, which means, had he not been subject to the mandatory minimum, the sentence guideline would have been about 12 to 16 years in prison, according to court documents.
Guernsey added that Estrada-Elias’ case “really calls into question the equity of compassionate releases,” citing that it appears that it is ultimately dependent on a “fluke of geography” over the gravity of one’s medical condition or the individual’s compelling circumstances.
