The federal prison system won’t send an elderly tax scammer to the notorious MDC Brooklyn jail after Judge Gary Brown threatened to vacate the man’s sentence if he’s forced to endure the “dangerous, barbaric conditions” there.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has agreed it won’t make 75-year-old Daniel Colucci serve out his nine months at the Sunset Park lockup, which has been plagued for years by gross under-staffing, medical mistreatment, atrocious conditions and violence.
“Based upon information provided to the government, the defendant will not be designated to the MDC to serve his sentence,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kelly confirmed in a court filing Tuesday.
Brown made waves with his decision to add a trap door to Colucci’s nine-month sentence last month, saying he’d change the sentence to house arrest if Colucci winds up at the MDC. Colucci was convicted of a nearly $1 million series of tax frauds.
Brown excoriated the Sunset Park jail, pointing out that judges routinely reduce prison sentences based on the conditions they’ve endured there.
“Allegations of inadequate supervision, unbridled assaults and lack of sufficient medical care are
supported by an increasing body of evidence, with certain instances that are irrefutable,” Brown wrote. “That critical medical care is frequently delayed or denied within the facility seems no longer in doubt.”
A BOP representative assured prosecutors that the office the office that picks a facility for incoming inmates has been instructed to avoid the MDC in Colucci’s case, Kelly wrote.
A BOP spokesman on Wednesday would not discuss the decision, or comment on whether the August ruling by Brown, a Long Island Federal Court judge, played a role.
On Wednesday, Colucci’s lawyer, Richard Kestenbaum, said he’ll serve his sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Mass.
“Not as good as being home. Better than going to MDC and not as good as being home,” the defense lawyer said.
Colucci must surrender on Sept. 17.
Though the MDC mainly houses suspects awaiting prosecution, about 40 of its nearly 1,300 inmates are not there pretrial, BOP officials have said. White collar defendants with sentences shorter than a year can wind up serving their time at the MDC, defense attorneys told the Daily News.
Kestenbaum said Colucci could have wound up at MDC if not for Brown’s ruling.
“There is a good chance, a pretty good chance actually, with a short sentence like that. So the judge accomplished what he wanted.”
Kestenbaum last week moved to have Colucci’s sentence changed to house arrest regardless of where he’s sent, citing a newly diagnosed heart condition, but the judge denied that request Wednesday.
Brown’s decision included a litany of assaults at the MDC, including a pair of stabbing murders inside the prison walls in June and July, and a caught-on-video April assault, first reported by The News, where three MS-13 members repeatedly stabbed a fellow inmate for 37 unsupervised seconds before a lone correction officer arrived to stop the attack.