By Frank G. Runyeon

Law360, New York (May 13, 2020, 8:44 PM EDT) -- A veteran prison executive on Wednesday told a New York federal judge that he disagreed with a doctor's scathing inspection report accusing a Brooklyn prison of poor medical care amid the pandemic, saying the jail was "very well run."

Jeffrey A. Beard, who once ran the Pennsylvania and California state prison systems, told U.S. District Judge Rachel P. Kovner that he saw the federal Metropolitan Detention Center was clean and well-supplied, with inmates communicating with the guards about their needs and not complaining to him about their conditions as he testified as an expert in defense of the jail.

"The MDC is a pretty darn well-run facility," Beard told the judge during the hearing for a preliminary injunction. "I was frankly surprised by how well it looked." The onetime warden said detention centers like MDC that house pretrial detainees often have sanitation problems because many inmates are transient and don't see the facility as their home.

Beard is the third government witness in two days to present a similar vote of confidence for the prison in an effort to beat back a damning portrayal of inept medical care amid a COVID-19 outbreak by Dr. Homer Venters, a former chief medical doctor of New York City's jails.

The inmates claim they should be released because the warden is holding them in unconstitutionally unsafe conditions and the warden is showing deliberate indifference to their needs.

On Tuesday, a top health official at the Bureau of Prisons relayed her "pleasant surprise" at the results of an unannounced inspection and a newly minted epidemiologist approved the prison's health policies.

On Wednesday, Beard described his surprise during his April 28 visit to find that there were no inmates in isolation due to a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, as Venters had reported on his April 23 visit.

"They said the last two had been released the day before," Beard said. The government expert later chalked it up to the prison having "managed to get this thing under control."

Beard also described seeing a "whole pile of bar soap" as well as ample personal protective equipment, or PPE, being worn by nearly everyone he encountered. Inmates did not raise any issues with him as he toured the facility, he said.

"I had no one making any complaints to me," he said, while noting that a few inmates had asked if he had anything to do with compassionate release, but he demurred.

"I think they've done a very good job," Beard said of the prison's COVID-19 mitigation efforts.

On cross-examination, counsel for the inmates attacked Beard's qualifications for a case that turns on the quality of medical care provided to inmates.

"Do you have any formal medical training?" asked inmates' counsel Betsy Ginsberg.

"No," said Beard, who holds a doctorate in psychology.

"You last provided mental health services as a clinician 45 years ago?" Ginsberg probed.

"It would have been in the 1970s, yes," Beard confirmed.

Ginsberg turned to Beard's record as a senior corrections officials in state courts, eliciting that the former executive had been "sued thousands of times" in his professional capacity before drilling down a filing he made in a landmark federal class action lawsuit related to overcrowding in the California prisons he oversaw.

Ginsberg pointedly noted that a three-judge panel "found that the evidence you mentioned of both a safer prison system and the reduced spread of disease had no factual basis in the record."

"If that's what you say it says, I guess that's what it says," Beard replied.

That court also found that the government's expert had made claims about disease transmission that was better suited to a medical expert's testimony, Ginsberg said.

"I don't recollect," Beard replied.

Ginsberg also took pains to point out that Beard did not dispute several key contentions in the inmates' lawsuit, including the fact that sick call requests were ignored by medical staff and the paper records of those requests were destroyed, resulting in delayed and inadequate care.

"Your report doesn't address any of those failings with regard to sick call does it?" Ginsberg asked.

"No," Beard replied.

The judge set closing arguments in the preliminary injunction hearing for Thursday at 2 p.m. and asked the attorneys for focus on "the medical care piece, including the sick call issue" related to COVID-19 as well as the mens rea, or guilty conscience, requirement to find that the warden had violated inmates' Fifth and Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment by acting with deliberate indifference to their needs.

Judge Kovner cautioned she planned to interrupt with questions.

The inmates are represented by Alexander A. Reinert and Betsy R. Ginsberg of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Katherine Rosenfeld and O. Andrew F. Wilson of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP.

The government is represented by James R. Cho, Seth D. Eichenholtz, Joseph A. Marutollo and Paulina Stamatelos of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.

The case is Chunn et al. v. Edge, case number 1:20-cv-01590, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

--Editing by Brian Baresch.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of inmates' counsel. The error has been corrected

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