Richard Kling Appointed to Illinois Supreme Court Task Force, Leads Students in Compassionate Release Petition

Clinical Professor

2020, there were more than 23,000 papers published on COVID-19, with the number of articles doubling every 20 days. The team analyzed the burgeoning medical research literature about COVID-19 and found that the historical failure to take women’s symptoms and needs into account continues to this day. Even though tens of thousands of studies of COVID-19 have been undertaken, only a few analyze the difference in symptoms between men and women. By failing to disaggregate symptoms by gender, Andrews says, researchers are failing to comply with existing policies. More importantly, she says, they are missing out on the opportunity to better understand—and better treat and prevent—the further spread of the global pandemic. Men are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than women. As a few researchers are beginning to belatedly realize, notes Andrews, understanding the unique aspects of women’s immune systems and hormones can provide a key to treating COVID-19, thereby contributing to both men’s and women’s health outcomes.

Richard Kling and students in the Criminal Defense Litigation Clinic have been working on compassionate release petitions, succeeding in getting one client released from prison since this past March. Many people who didn’t previously meet the requirements for compassionate release became eligible during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kling says, because of age or pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes that made them high risk. Kling and students Benjamin Jambois, Isabella Romano, Hailee McKie, and Monica Pechous worked on a petition for a 65-year-old man who was in prison for nonviolent, white-collar crimes. As part of the petition, they presented his medical records and statistical data on COVID-19 cases within the correctional facility and surrounding county, since prison staff can become infected and bring the virus to work. The judge ruled that there were no immediate extraordinary circumstances to warrant release but recommended that the Bureau of Prisons consider early release on home confinement. Their client was released within two weeks. Kling, Jambois, and McKie are currently working on two more compas sionate release petitions.

In June, Kling was appointed as a consultant on constitutional issues to the Illinois Supreme Court’s Court Operations During COVID-19 Task Force, which is analyzing and making recommendations to address the continuing challenges of court operations during the pandemic. Kling is on a subcommittee researching criminal courts, and one of the biggest dilemmas is how to ensure speedy trials with juries. Kling says that many people may be hesitant about coming to a courthouse for a prospective 40- to 50-person jury pool, and since the pandemic has disproportionately affected minorities, it could be difficult to get juries who are representative of their communities. The subcommittee is researching models from other states to see how in-person trials or virtual trials are functioning. Among the defense bar, Kling says one advantage of the virtual environment is the ability to take care of status or preliminary hearings in multiple places without having to travel between county courthouses.