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Law360 (April 13, 2020, 9:51 PM EDT) -- Reality Leigh Winner, a former government contractor who pled guilty to leaking a classified report on Russian election interference, urged a Georgia federal judge on Friday to allow her to serve the remaining two years of her sentence under home confinement due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Winner, 28, says she suffers from health issues that put her at a greater risk if she were to contract the virus, and she asked the judge to recognize the threat as an "extraordinary and compelling" reason allowed under federal law to release her from prison.
"A prison inmate like Reality cannot 'shelter in place' and avoid contact with others," Winner said. "Instead, she is stuck in a densely populated breeding ground for the disease."
Winner said she suffers from bulimia nervosa and respiratory illness and asked the judge to let her "avoid the fate of so many others currently incarcerated in federal prisons."
Winner was sentenced in August 2018 to five years and three months in prison, which prosecutors called at the time the longest sentence ever handed down for unauthorized disclosure of national defense information to the media.
The U.S. Air Force veteran agreed to the 63-month sentence after copping in June of that year to charges that she disclosed a top-secret report to an online news organization shortly after starting work as a linguist for Pluribus International Corp.
Though the government has refrained from identifying the recipient of the classified information or detailing the contents of the document, The Intercept has released statements indicating that Winner was arrested for disclosing a report that formed the basis of a story it published detailing intelligence community reports of a Russian hacking operation targeting U.S. voting systems.
Assuming she receives full credit for good behavior, Winner will serve at least 85% of her sentence and has already served 34 months, according to her brief in support of her motion for compassionate release.
Winner said that as of April 9, there are at last 283 federal inmates and 125 Bureau of Prison employees who have tested positive for COVID-19, and her prison, FMC Carswell in Texas, has run out of hand sanitizer.
"Given Reality's vulnerability to COVID-19, prison is a particularly dangerous place for her," she said. "Inmates are confined to close quarters, eat meals in large dining halls, and use communal showers and recreational facilities."
Winner also said she has been examined by physicians, all of whom have found her to not be a threat to herself or others. She also said her offense was nonviolent, involved a single document, and was not on par with the Pentagon Papers or a massive WikiLeaks dump.
"Indeed, a three-year term is longer than every or almost every other case cited in her sentencing memorandum," Winner said. "Her continued incarceration during the COVID-10 pandemic may induce irreparable harm to her health. To prolong her incarceration further would be to impose a sentence 'greater than necessary' to comply with the statutory purposes of punishment."
The U.S. Department of Justice and counsel for Winner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Winner is represented by Joe D. Whitley of Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC.
Counsel for the government was not immediately available.
The case is U.S. v. Winner, case number 1:17-cr-00034, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.
--Editing by Adam LoBelia.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
