Originally published April 28, 2021. Statements about the law were updated in October 2026; the box below gives today’s rules.
Outcomes vary. A past result does not predict or guarantee the outcome of any other case.
Thinking about filing the fill-in-the-blank compassionate release form your unit team hands out? This case shows why that can backfire. A man filed the form on his own, the judge denied it, and the ruling may make any future request harder.
Prison-provided compassionate release forms
April 27th, 2021
The case
James Thomas Lifsey (United States v. Lifsey, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79200) is serving his sentence at Texarkana. In January 2015 he was convicted of multiple counts of production and possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to 192 months.
Why his request faced an uphill battle
As a sex offender, Lifsey faced an uphill battle from the start. Many people with sex offenses have been granted compassionate release, but these cases are always harder to present to a court.
His case was especially hard because he had not only viewed child pornography but also produced it. The government argued that he was “now a sex offender who made contact with a child victim and he used the child to produce sexually explicit imagery for distribution to others and for his own deviant gratification.”
That response was predictable. Yet Lifsey filed a fill-in-the-blank form that offered no real evidence to outweigh the government’s concerns. The motion was weak from the start, and filing it has made any future try at early release more difficult.
What went wrong
The court pointed out that Lifsey did not reply to the government’s arguments “despite being given an opportunity to do so”. Not replying is close to accepting the government’s arguments. A lawyer, or even a good paralegal, would have told him that.
The judge ruled against him. The court found he had no extraordinary and compelling reason for release. It also found that the 3553(a) factors (the sentencing factors a judge must weigh, such as the nature of the crime and public safety) showed he was a continuing threat to society.
The lesson for your family
A person charged with a crime already faces an uphill battle. Don’t help the other side by giving the court a weak argument that lets it find, all over again, that you are dangerous. In most cases, filing the BOP-provided form with the court does exactly that.
Documents from this case
These documents come from this compassionate release forms example:
- James Lifsey PRO SE Motion for Compassionate Release
- Government’s Response to James Thomas Lifsey
- United States v. Lifsey, 2021 Judge Ruling
If you want help with a compassionate release request, book a consultation.