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Law360, New York (April 13, 2020, 4:42 PM EDT) -- A Manhattan federal judge on Monday denied a request for release made by a former dealer on the online Silk Road drug bazaar who is incarcerated for lying about where he got $19 million worth of bitcoins, finding the defendant is not at high risk of contracting COVID-19.
U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff held that 61-year-old Hugh Brian Haney, who is serving a 3½-year sentence at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for money laundering, has not presented an "extraordinary and compelling" case for compassionate release.
"He is less than 65 years old and — unlike many of the prisoners who have applied in recent days for release because they suffer from asthma, diabetes, heart disease, or other deleterious health conditions that make them unusually vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19 — Haney is in reasonably good health," he wrote.
Once a successful Ohio toy merchant, Haney sold oxycodone on Silk Road, the online drug bazaar, before it was shuttered by the feds in 2013. He had stopped selling in 2012 and was not apprehended, but last year he was was caught lying about the provenance of his Silk Road bitcoins, which had risen in value from less than $10,000 to about $19 million. Haney was jailed and pled guilty in November. He was sentenced by Judge Rakoff in February.
"Haney's age of 61 places him at a higher risk of experiencing complications from COVID-19 than the general prison population. But if Haney's age alone were a sufficient factor ... it follows that every federal inmate in the country above the age of 60 should be forthwith released," Judge Rakoff added.
The judge also turned aside an alternative request to grant Haney bail and to later visit the question of whether the defendant's continued incarceration is in keeping with his constitutional rights amid the coronavirus pandemic, which as of Monday has killed more than 10,000 people in New York State.
Judge Rakoff did allow that Haney could, if he wishes, make an argument that his lawyer provided ineffective assistance in not asking for bail at his February sentencing given that the dangers of the virus were arguably known at that time. But the judge called that a "doubtful proposition."
Haney's lawyer, Martin Cohen, expressed disappointment in an email to Law360.
"We were seeking the most modest relief for a 61-year-old who had been designated by the MDC itself as being at high risk of contracting and succumbing to COVID-19: that he be released on home incarceration for just long enough to quarantine and report to his designated facility, once it was safe for him to do so. Such a just result would have protected Mr. Haney, while also reducing the population of the MDC," Cohen wrote.
The government is represented by Samuel Raymond and Tara La Morte of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Haney is represented by Martin Cohen of the Federal Defenders of New York Inc.
The case is U.S. v. Haney, case number 1:19-cr-00541, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
--Editing by Daniel King.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
