The government isn’t buying former U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent’s motion asking a federal judge to vacate and correct the sentence Kent is serving in a Florida prison. “The motion lacks even the barest factual support, and all but one of the motion’s claims are procedurally barred, because they must be brought in a civil rights lawsuit, not a petition,” the government alleges in its Sept. 15 opposition in United States v. Samuel B. Kent. The government also alleges in the opposition that the one issue Kent could bring in his Aug. 2 motion — which challenges his sentence on the ground the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) denied him entry into its Residential Drug Abuse Program — is “foreclosed” by his plea agreement, and barred by 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals precedent and BOP policy. Kent filed the motion to vacate alleging the BOP has been “subjecting him to conditions tantamount to psychological and physical torture” since he began serving a 33-month sentence in June 2009. Kent additionally alleged that at the Lake Butler Reception Center for intake into the Florida Department of Corrections he was physically and mentally abused by Florida state prison guards, forced to “helplessly” listen to the screams of a man being “violently raped” in an adjoining cell, and forced to “strip naked and perform a painful and repetitive series of humiliating exercises.” In the opposition, the government alleges that Kent’s challenges to the conditions of his confinement are “not cognizable” in a habeas petition, and the allegations are “either factually unsupported or, if true, constitute reasonable response to the challenge of incarcerating a federal judge.” The government asks U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of the Northern District of Florida to deny Kent’s request. Vinson, sitting in Houston by assignment, sentenced Kent last year. “The Court should deny the defendant’s habeas petition, and defendant Kent should exhaust his administrative remedies, give BOP an opportunity to examine and resolve his allegations in the first instance, and then consider whether to file a civil rights lawsuit regarding his conditions of confinement allegations,” the government alleges. As to Kent’s complaints about his confinement in Florida, a BOP official informed the government in a Sept. 9 letter attached as an exhibit to the opposition that he does not believe the allegations are “meritorious.” In that letter, John Gaither, community corrections manager in Orlando for the BOP, wrote that he met with Kent on Aug. 9 at the DeMilly Correctional Institution in Polk County, Fla., where Kent is confined and the former Galveston judge “did not raise any complaints or concerns with his placement there or with his treatment by the Florida Department of Corrections or its employees.” Gaither added that the Florida Department of Corrections investigated the allegations Kent made in his motion about his treatment and they were “either not meritorious or could not be substantiated.” Dick DeGuerin, a partner in DeGuerin & Dickson in Houston who represents Kent, says he’s disturbed by two things in the government’s opposition: that the government failed to address Kent’s allegation that he was placed in solitary confinement for 58 days for nondisciplinary reasons and that Gaither apparently met with Kent without his permission or knowledge. “I don’t want to prejudge what happened, but that struck me as a red flag,” DeGuerin says about the meeting. As part of a plea deal, on Feb. 23, 2009, Kent pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice. On May 11, 2009, Vinson sentenced Kent, a former federal judge in Galveston, to 33 months in prison.
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
Comments