Judges are interpreting the law on the fly as they face an unprecedented spike in requests for “compassionate release” from prison, coming to different conclusions about what can be done in the context of a pandemic.
The swell of requests for what’s known as compassionate release come after the passage of a law, written before the Covid-19 outbreak, that made it easier for those requests to be filed with the courts.
Federal judges ruled on more than 400 petitions for compassionate release in March and April, compared with only 16 in the same months last year, according to a Bloomberg ...