Posts by Brandon Sample

The recent passage of the First Step Act provides a small number of benefits to a small number of federal prisoners. One provision within the Act, however, might turn out to be quite significant.   The criminal justice reform organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) released a four-page document entitled “Compassionate Release and the First…

Federal prisoner Steve Cheatham was diagnosed with advanced stage cancer late last year.  He was given a few months to live. Prior to December 2018, that would mean that Cheatham could ask the Bureau of Prisons for a reduction in sentence–for compassionate release. The Bureau would then have slowly pushed paperwork around, and within a…