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Law360 (April 21, 2020, 5:57 PM EDT ) Federal prosecutors in Georgia said former defense contractor Reality Leigh Winner doesn't merit release over concerns about her health amid a prison lockdown imposed to contain the novel coronavirus, urging a judge on Tuesday to reject her bid for early release from her five-year sentence for leaking government information.
Winner is serving a sentence of more than five years after having pled guilty to illegally leaking a report on Russian interference in U.S. elections. On April 10, she asked for early release so she can avoid adverse consequences of the pandemic sweeping through federal prisons.
In the motion, Winner's attorneys cited a "propensity for respiratory illnesses" and the potential for a partial lockdown to exacerbate her bulimia nervosa. They also expressed concern that being confined to her cell would prevent her from using exercise as a coping mechanism for her eating disorder.
Winner is one of some 1,600 inmates at Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. As of Tuesday, two inmates had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics.
As prosecutors across the country have done in many other cases where inmates have sought release, the assistant U.S. attorneys on Winner's case urged the judge to reject the request in a filing on Tuesday.
Prosecutors argued that Winner's conditions don't fit the federal sentencing commission's description of the outlier situations, such as terminal illness, that merit compassionate release.
"Not being able to exercise or eat how she would like does not qualify as 'unable to provide self-care,'" they wrote, quoting from the policy.
They also argued that Winner has not fulfilled the requirement under the First Step Act to first petition the BOP for release and then wait 30 days before taking the claim to court. They stated the BOP is best positioned to evaluate prisoners for release to home confinement.
There are 143,705 in BOP-run facilities. According to the bureau, 1,280 inmates have been released to home confinement since late March.
Winner is serving a 63-month sentence after pleading guilty to disclosing a top-secret report to an online news organization while working as a linguist for Pluribus International Corp., a contractor for the National Security Agency.
Although the government has refrained from identifying the recipient of the classified information or detailing the contents of the document, The Intercept has released statements indicating that Winner was arrested for disclosing a report that formed the basis of a story it published detailing intelligence community reports of a Russian hacking operation targeting U.S. voting systems.
The government is represented by Jennifer G. Solari and Justin G. Davids of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia.
Winner is represented by Joe D. Whitley, Matthew Chester and Thomas Barnard of Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC.
The case is U.S. v. Winner, case number 1:17-cr-00034, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.
--Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.
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