63
that without that deadline pressure and with no clear
end in sight to their cases, more clients are plead-
ing guilty in exchange for time served or probation.
“There’s not that light at the end of the tunnel that
says, ‘If I can just have my hearing or trial, I’m going
to make my case,’ ” Luongo says. “Imagine what that
feels like.”
Plea deals were overwhelmingly common before
the pandemic. Of the nearly 80,000 defendants fac-
ing federal criminal cases in 2018, about 90% pleaded
guilty and only 2% went to trial, according to a Pew
Research Center analysis of data collected by the fed-
eral judiciary. At the state level, jury trials in 2017 ac-
counted for fewer than 3% of criminal dispositions in
22 jurisdictions with available data, the NCSC says.
Add the fear of languishing in overcrowded jails—
where prisoners are twice as likely as the general
population to die from COVID-19, a recent report
found—and the offer of a plea deal looks sweeter,
even though a criminal conviction can stigmatize
someone for life and affect their ability to obtain
housing, jobs and education. Still, with more than
2,400 COVID-19 deaths behind bars, according to
the Marshall Project, immediate concerns about be-
coming infected may outweigh future repercussions.
“The impacts on the rest of your life only matter
if you’re alive,” says Skailer Qvistgaard, a Massachu-
setts trial attorney. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t find
housing if you died in jail.”
Qvistgaard says one of his immunocompromised
clients was ready to challenge his case in court after
insisting he had been falsely accused of assault and
battery. But after nearly two months sharing a jail
cell in a facility with COVID-19 cases, the 39-year-old
pleaded guilty in October in exchange for time
served. “His goal was to stay alive,” Qvistgaard says.
“There was no other way to get him out.”
The Legal Aid Society says a similar situation
prompted Michael Hilton, a 64-year-old client, to
plead guilty in the fall to nonviolent parole violations,
including not staying at a court- appointed shelter
and failing to report to his parole officer. The non-
profit says Hilton, who has a weakened immune sys-
tem because of HIV, feared exposure to the corona-
virus at the shelter. He was unable to let his parole
officer know he would miss their meeting because the
parole system was in an “exceptional state of disar-
ray during the pandemic,” according to Laura Eraso,
a Legal Aid staff attorney. Rather than fight the case
and risk more time in jail, Hilton took a plea agree-
ment in October, which got him released from New
York City’s Rikers Island under supervision.
“The pandemic is exerting a real influence on peo-
ple’s basic rights and dignity and their ability to go
free,” says Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a criminal-
justice researcher and Brown University sociology
professor. “These aren’t really choices anymore.”Cassandra Lundy’s attorney requested four
times that she be freed on bail after she was charged
in Janie Marshall’s death in April 2020, but the court
rejected each bid, prosecutors said. “I just thought of
the irony of it,” says Marshall’s great-niece, Antoinette
Leonard- Jean Charles. “She hit my aunt, trying to
prevent COVID, and there she was surrounded by it”
in jail. An appeals court eventually lowered Lundy’s
$200,000 bail to $30,000, and Lundy was released
on July 15. Her attorney and Brooklyn Defender Ser-
vices, which is representing her, did not respond to
requests for comment. On Feb. 10, the case was ad-
journed until May.
When, or if, Lundy stands trial, Eleanor Leonard,
Marshall’s niece, hopes to search Lundy’s eyes for
signs of remorse. “I would just like to face her to see
why she would do that to an old lady,” she says. Then,
if given the chance, Leonard would want Lundy to
hear how, in one moment, her family was robbed of
a “caring, loving person” who was a role model and a
trailblazer. Marshall was an accountant at the Social
Security Administration and the first African Amer-
ican to lead the department in which she worked,
her family says. “She was a sophisticated, pro-Black
woman, who made you proud to be African Ameri-
can,” says Leonard-Jean Charles, 41.
Marshall’s great-niece shares stories about her at
any opportunity and has been the family’s point per-
son in the case. But she feels helpless, with nothing to
do but wait. “When the courts are closed, you don’t
know when you’re going to be able to do anything,”
she says. “I have no way of making sure she gets jus-
tice or that she’s not forgotten.” □2X
Likelihood
COVID-19 will
kill a person
confined in
prison60
Number of
people needed
for jury selection
in most typical
state felony
cases