HOUSTON – The wife of an imprisoned former U.S. Congressman this week released a video imploring President Donald Trump to pardon her husband on humanitarian grounds or allow him to serve his sentence in home confinement, citing health conditions that put him at increased risk of fatality if he contracts COVID-19.
Steve Stockman, 63, who is a Type II diabetic with scarred lungs and high blood pressure, served as a U.S. Representative for Texas’ 9th and 36th congressional districts. After three failed grand juries, a fourth indicted him. He was convicted in 2018 of diversion of federal election donations. He has now served two years of a 10-year sentence in a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
Thirty four federal prisons are affected by the COVID-19 virus, and the number is expected to increase. Attorney General William Barr, in a memo to Director of Bureau Prisons, listed age and vulnerability of the inmate to COVID-19 as the first factors in assessing inmate’s eligibility for home confinement.
“Mr. President, I ask you please, to intervene so that this sentence does not become a death penalty. This punishment does not fit the conviction,” Stockman says in her video.
In nearby Harris County, a judge released a murder suspect on bond after the inmate expressed fears of contracting COVID-19 in jail.
“My pleas are reasonable. Keeping an aging, physically vulnerable, non-violent, non-sex crime convicted inmate in prison during a pandemic is cruel. My husband is not a danger to society. At a minimum, I want Steve to shelter at home so that he’s not sent to me in a body bag in a few weeks.,” Patti Stockman said in an interview.
More than fifty of the nation’s foremost conservative community leaders signed a petition urging Stockman’s removal from prison; signers include Beverly LaHaye founder of Concerned Women for America, Sidney Powell who is General Michael Flynn’s appellate lawyer, and Dr. James Dobson founder of Focus on the Family.
“Steve Stockman poses no danger to society, but remaining in prison may be a death sentence for him,” the letter states. The signers call him the “perfect example of a prisoner who fits the criteria of who should be removed from prison” during the pandemic.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ObMy5tecg
Attorney General Memo: https://www.justice.gov/file/1262731/download
