Andrew Dalack
Appearances
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
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Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
So it's hard for me to speak to each individual's experience, but I'm confident that no matter who you are or where you're being held in MDC Brooklyn, it is an extremely challenging place. And again, what makes it so challenging is that it's essentially like a black hole.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
So if you have an emergency medical issue, if your blood sugar is too high and you're a diabetic or you have some sort of a heart attack or a medical emergency, there's absolutely no guarantees that you're going to be receiving medical care.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
I've heard horror stories from clients where one of their cellmates has collapsed and they're banging on their cell door during a lockdown, begging for a correctional officer to come and intervene, and nobody comes for minutes. And again, I'm not saying that's because people in the MDC Brooklyn don't care. I'm just saying there's not enough of them there.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
And it shouldn't be the case that while you're awaiting trial on serious federal charges, that you also have to be worried, am I going to make it out of here alive? Or am I going to make it out of here without being, you know, stabbed or beaten?
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
Dealing with a federal criminal case is stressful enough, and having to sort of deal with all the other atmospherics at MDC Brooklyn makes it truly unbearable. If I could just sort of say as a side note too, as a lawyer, you can imagine how terribly frustrating and difficult it is to come to the jail, to meet with our clients, to try and discuss with them,
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
you know, very complicated and difficult aspects of their case and to ask them to engage with us on making, you know, very consequential decisions about their lives when all they want to talk about is the terrible conditions that they're forced to endure inside the jail. Conditions that I don't really have any control over.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
They become so focused on the terrible conditions that they're experiencing in MDC Brooklyn that they are not in the position to really think clearly and contribute meaningfully to their defense on their federal criminal case.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
I have two responses to that, primarily. The first is the vast majority of the people who were held at MDC Brooklyn have not been convicted of anything. They're presumed innocent. And that presumption of innocence doesn't mean anything if we're going to put them in a place and say, well, there's reason to believe that you committed a crime and so now you deserve to be punished extraordinarily.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
That's not how the American criminal system works. That's just not a way that other human beings should be treated. Everybody's life at MDC Brooklyn matters equally, certainly matters to the people who love and care about them. And we need to be treating those human lives with dignity. So, you know, it's just not a tolerable situation.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
And unfortunately, until there's more political will to really implement... more meaningful reforms at the jail and address the chronic understaffing, the intransigence, the lack of adequate medical care, all these issues that we've been discussing today, it's going to remain a hellhole.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
Well, first, Anushka, I want to thank you and the BBC for taking an interest in the conditions at MVC Brooklyn, because it is an important issue of significant public interest. Anybody who has a loved one detained in that facility, that they deeply care about their well-being and their safety there, and they have good reason to. It is as bad of a place as people say it is.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
But the crux of the issue really is a completion of, I think, three factors that sort of work together to create a perfect storm. The first is chronic understaffing. So the jail is routinely operating anywhere from two-thirds to 75% sort of capacity at best at any given point. The second is overcrowdedness. There's just too many people there to begin with.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
And then the third is a certain bureaucratic intransigence. So there are just there just does not appear to be a meaningful political will to do anything about the situation in MVC Brooklyn. And that's why we're trying to seize upon opportunities like this when it seems like the public takes a
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
a particular interest in the conditions there because there are certain high-profile individuals detained there. And we're happy that's the case, but it shouldn't be that people should care about the conditions of a particular facility because the people who are housed there are popular or have sort of public stature. Everybody's life matters equally in this regard.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
And so it's really important that the public knows what's happening there.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
MVC Brooklyn is divided into two separate buildings. There's a West building and there's an East building.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
What happens, especially in the West building, is that if there's a problem in a particular unit, let's say there's a fight, let's say there's an argument or some sort of a dispute between a staff member and a detainee, the facility's knee-jerk reaction is to lock the whole unit down and sometimes to lock the whole facility down. And that's in large part because it's understaffed.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
If something goes wrong or something happens, they need to marshal a number of staff members to a particular floor. Well, that means that they necessarily have to lock everything else down. And what do we mean by a lockdown? These lockdowns are akin to solitary confinement. People are relegated to their cells for 23, 24 hours a day for an interminable period of time.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
They're denied access to showers. They're denied access to hot food. They're denied access to the telephone to speak with their loved ones. It's much more difficult for them to meet with their attorneys in any sort of like an expeditious fashion. It puts a tremendous amount of strain on people.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
And that's just notwithstanding the psychological impact of being confined to a very tiny cell with another person for days at a time. In addition to the psychological impact of being locked in on a regular basis, our clients routinely complain about inadequate amounts of food that oftentimes is inedible. People routinely complain of inadequate access to recreation.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
So I have clients there who throughout their entire time at MVC Brooklyn never saw the sun. You know, never were allowed to go outside and be able to just breathe fresh air. There's also the issue of safety.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
So when there's a dispute or when there's a problem between, you know, detainees, and you can obviously imagine how being locked up for interminable periods of time only enhances the stress level and enhances the tension. When that tension culminates in some sort of a fight, there's contraband rampant in that facility.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
And there's homemade weapons that are, you know, created out of pieces of metal and other sort of makeshift items that a lot of different detainees have available to them. And so when there's a fight or when there's some sort of other conflict, it can escalate. And when it escalates, people get hurt, people get stabbed.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
And it's a very sort of volatile environment that is a terribly scary place to be.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
Yes, so Gustavo Chavez is my client. He was charged with drug offense in the federal system, sort of receiving a package in the mail containing drugs. So whether you're convicted after trial or convicted because you've pled guilty to certain kinds of drug offenses, the law says you have to go to jail before you're ultimately sentenced by the judge.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
In Mr. Chavez's case, he did in fact plead guilty to one of those drug offenses that ordinarily required him to be remanded to jail pending sentencing. But Mr. Chavez presented with some challenges. He's an older man. He has health issues.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
I made an argument to Judge Jesse Furman that it would be cruel and completely unnecessary to put someone like Mr. Chavez in particular at NBC Brooklyn, given all the problems in the facility, which are also compounded by something that I failed to mention before, which is a lack of adequate medical care and attention.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
Well, to Judge Furman's credit, he not only engaged with my argument, acknowledging that other judges in the district had, in individual cases, concluded that the decrepit conditions at MVC Brooklyn warranted keeping people out on bail, he wrote a very well-reasoned decision and went through a sort of litany of problems that has plagued the MVC for years, again, primarily driven by understaffing, to say, look, there is some real merit to what
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
I was arguing that the conditions at MVC Brooklyn are so terrible that that no judge in the eastern or southern districts of New York can can be confident that in putting somebody there, they're putting them into a safe environment. He decided that that was an exceptional reason in and of itself.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
to keep Mr. Chavez and anybody else who did not otherwise present a risk of flight or a danger to the community while on bail from going to MDC Brooklyn pending sentencing. So it was really a landmark and watershed decision, and it's really done.
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
It's given a lot of other judges in the eastern and southern districts of New York considerable cover to say, look, we agree with Judge Ferman's very sound reasoning and logic. And again, where there's not a compelling argument that, And the judge agreed with you, sided with you. Did the prison respond to your critiques?
Diddy On Trial
What’s life like for Diddy in prison?
The jail didn't respond itself, but in our papers, we actually cited to a letter that was sent out by one of the union representatives for the correctional officers working at MDC Brooklyn, in which the union representative herself criticized the conditions and criticized the lack of staffing and the lack of resources and implored the authorities at the facility to do something about it before more people get hurt.