The Legal Aid Society, in light of the quickly escalating public health crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered within New York State prisons, filed a petition for habeas corpus on behalf of 16 medically vulnerable clients seeking their immediate release from Otisville Correctional Facility (OCF) in Orange County, New York, reporters NY1.

As of May 6, 2020, 44 incarcerated New Yorkers had tested positive for COVID – the second-highest number in the entire New York State prison system – and at least one person has died. These cases make up more than 10 percent of all cases in DOCCS’s 52 prisons statewide.

“They are very sick individuals who are at high risk for serious illness and complications and even death from COVID-19. And Otisville Correctional Facility and DOCCS prisons, in general, don’t have the capacity to protect them. Essentially, they have reactivated the death penalty by default. These are people who committed serious crimes, but they have done everything they can to rehabilitate themselves, said Tomoeh Murakmi-Tse, a staff attorney with the Criminal Appeals Bureau at The Legal Aid Society.