Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Criminal

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Episode: Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons

Author: Vox Media Podcast Network
Duration: 00:44:24

Episode Shownotes

In 1993, Gary Settle was sentenced to 177 years in prison. Twenty-six years into his sentence, he started helping other inmates get out of prison through something called compassionate release - a policy that allows people in prison to petition to be let out for “extraordinary and compelling” reasons. You

can learn more about Gary Settle in Anna Altman’s piece, "The Quality of Mercy," in The Atavist Magazine. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In the episode "Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons" from the podcast "Criminal," Gary Settle, sentenced to 177 years in prison, shares his journey after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and his advocacy for compassionate release. He discusses the healthcare inadequacies in prison and the bureaucratic challenges inmates face when seeking release due to terminal illnesses. Settle has helped over 40 inmates navigate the application process for compassionate release, emphasizing the importance of mutual support. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the need for such releases, highlighting systemic flaws in inmate health care and the justice system’s perception of inmates. Ultimately, his efforts showcase the humanity of incarcerated individuals seeking to reconnect with their families.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_04
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00:00:33 Speaker_04
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00:00:45 Speaker_04
People are making coffee mugs, collaborating with siblings to make family photo calendars, uploading funny photos to sweatshirts to make inside jokes. I'm starting a new tradition of making snow globe Christmas ornaments with a photo of my dog.

00:00:59 Speaker_04
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00:01:17 Speaker_04
Well, let's just start with you introducing yourself.

00:01:22 Speaker_06
My name is Gary Settle. You want my current situation?

00:01:26 Speaker_05
Yeah, where are we right now?

00:01:28 Speaker_06
These nice ladies have come to visit me at FMC Butner, which is a federal prison hospital in North Carolina.

00:01:35 Speaker_04
Butner is one of seven federal prisons that houses inmates with significant health issues. Bernie Madoff was treated at Butner. So was Ted Kaczynski. Gary Settle has been in prison since 1993. What's your day-to-day life like here?

00:01:52 Speaker_06
All right, well, it's just like any prison. We're confined to ourselves for a part overnight and for different parts of the day. But for me, I get up in the morning. get my medication together and all that.

00:02:06 Speaker_06
I have a class at 1230, living with chronic illness, that I'm a mentor in, I'm in that class too. Then I'm hopefully gonna get outside and get some fresh air.

00:02:18 Speaker_05
How long can you go outside for a day?

00:02:20 Speaker_06
The chemo I'm on, it causes me to, flushing, and my face will get purple if I stay out too long. But I generally get a couple hours a day anyway, sometimes more. As it cools off, I'll probably get a little bit more.

00:02:32 Speaker_05
And what time do you have to be in your cell at night? 8.30.

00:02:37 Speaker_06
Yeah.

00:02:37 Speaker_06
And they open the doors around six in the morning and, uh, most of the day route, we have a little hour period of time in the middle of the day where they count, but every three weeks I do immunotherapy on a Wednesday and chemotherapy on a Friday.

00:02:51 Speaker_06
Um, and I have some other issues. So I have appointments throughout the week, but for the most part, um, I do a lot of reading, um, communicate with my friends and family and sit around and wait.

00:03:06 Speaker_05
Wait for what?

00:03:08 Speaker_06
either to go home or die. I mean, that's because I don't think I'll leave here again.

00:03:17 Speaker_04
In 2018, after he'd been in prison for over two decades, he went to the doctor for a checkup. At the time, he said he felt weird. His blood work came back abnormal. The doctors did a biopsy that showed he likely had prostate cancer.

00:03:35 Speaker_04
Gary was transferred to a prison with medical facilities, Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.

00:03:44 Speaker_04
While we were waiting to go see Gary, we watched doctors come in wearing protective vests over their scrubs and putting their stethoscopes through the metal detector. How are you feeling?

00:03:56 Speaker_06
About like you'd expect after six years of treatment. I'll say this, I'm better off than some of the poor guys I see up there on the floor. When I first came here, I had never really been around sick people.

00:04:09 Speaker_06
It's strange to say, but in the institutions I was incarcerated in, they were all pretty, everybody was pretty healthy. When you were gone, when you were sick, you came to a place like this.

00:04:21 Speaker_04
People, Butner, when you hear Butner, people have heard about this place before. It's not a little unknown prison somewhere. I mean, this place has a reputation.

00:04:32 Speaker_06
Yes. It's ironic. My first day here, people get newspapers and they'll leave them laying around for the next person. My first day here, I picked up the USA Today and I looked in around the state section and it had a lawsuit.

00:04:46 Speaker_06
Butner, this place had just paid someone because the guy came here and lost his vision.

00:04:51 Speaker_04
The man, Vanar Anar, knew he had a degenerative eye disease. According to the lawsuit, as his eyesight got worse, he repeatedly asked staff for treatment.

00:05:02 Speaker_04
By the time he did see a surgeon, the doctor said he urgently needed an operation and scheduled it for the next day, but it was too late. We asked Butner about this.

00:05:14 Speaker_04
The Bureau of Prisons replied saying that, for privacy reasons, they could not comment.

00:05:20 Speaker_06
And I don't want to criticize the medical staff here per se, but it's a bureaucracy. And I probably had cancer. I probably had this cancer for a year or two before I was diagnosed, because you don't get the normal tests that a normal person would get.

00:05:35 Speaker_04
When you heard that you were going to be moved here to Butner, what did you think?

00:05:41 Speaker_06
That's when I really realized that there was really something wrong with me. Because in a regular, I keep saying a regular prison, but a normal prison that's designed for security reasons more so than medical.

00:05:52 Speaker_06
Like this is, you didn't get a lot of medical treatment there because you didn't need it. So when I knew that they took the step to bring me here that I was worse off than what I thought.

00:06:04 Speaker_04
You know, I've always thought about this.

00:06:06 Speaker_04
My father had cancer and I was with him when he was having chemo and radiation and he was really sick after he would get chemo or the radiation and we'd take him home and I would be trying to get him to eat and drink and he'd be nauseous and feeling and I'd be trying to feed him anything I could to get him to

00:06:26 Speaker_04
Does that happen here when you finish your treatments? Are they giving you lots of food options? No.

00:06:32 Speaker_06
See, I did 42 radiation treatments first, and now I've done 12 rounds of chemo and 6 rounds of immunotherapy. No, they don't give us a lot of food options, and it's so strange.

00:06:43 Speaker_06
The more I've read into my own cancer, I found out that sugar isn't really bad for cancer. Well, the options that we can buy on the commissary here, which is the inmate store, it's predominantly sugar items.

00:06:55 Speaker_06
We can't buy any fresh produce, and there's security concerns, and I understand all that, but I just always thought that a place like this that was designed for medical cases for the most part, that you should have healthy alternatives here that might not be available in a place that didn't have medical conditions, but nobody listens to me.

00:07:14 Speaker_04
And if you've had a hard chemo treatment, is someone checking up on you? Is someone saying, you know, Gary, let me, what can I bring you? I see that you're, you know, struggling, you know?

00:07:26 Speaker_06
So a lot of us rely on each other. And so there's like little support groups. They have inmate workers here that do a good job, too. ICPs, or Inmate Cadre Program, I think it is. But a lot of us check on each other. And it's about the best you could do.

00:07:45 Speaker_04
They would push each other in wheelchairs if they were having trouble walking to meals, or to doctor's appointments, or to use the bathroom.

00:07:54 Speaker_06
fundamental to how I was raised in my family. It's part of how I am. And the staff doesn't do a bad job, but they're overworked, understaffed.

00:08:03 Speaker_04
In 2019, Gary happened to read an email newsletter from an organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums. There was a new law called the First Step Act.

00:08:16 Speaker_04
It included changes to the minimum amount of time judges could sentence people for some drug-related crimes. Correctional officers could no longer use restraints on pregnant inmates.

00:08:29 Speaker_04
And it ordered the Bureau of Prisons to assign inmates to prisons as close to their home as possible. It also changed how inmates could apply for something called compassionate release. Compassionate Release was introduced in 1984.

00:08:47 Speaker_04
It allows the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to ask a judge to reduce an inmate's sentence for extraordinary and compelling circumstances, like terminal illness and serious health issues related to old age.

00:09:04 Speaker_04
In 2019, The New York Times reported that about 20% of people in prison were 50 years old or older. Researchers say that people in prison age faster than people outside of prison. So in many cases, age 50 and up is considered elderly.

00:09:22 Speaker_04
But most prisons weren't designed to support aging inmates' health needs.

00:09:29 Speaker_03
You know, people are still required to walk far to get their pills or they might not be able to have the same kind of pain medication or with the same frequency.

00:09:40 Speaker_03
And so the ability to provide a comforting environment is certainly circumscribed by the prison environment.

00:09:51 Speaker_04
Anna Altman is a journalist who's written about Compassionate Release.

00:09:55 Speaker_03
People who have been in prison for a long time, which many people who are dying in prison have been in prison a long time, they don't necessarily trust the system that is containing them.

00:10:06 Speaker_03
And they don't, therefore, necessarily trust the doctors that are employed by that system to care for them. So they don't know if they're getting full information. They might not be able to request certain things.

00:10:16 Speaker_03
And so there isn't a feeling that they are able to advocate for themselves or ask for the medication or the comfort measures that might make them more comfortable in their final days.

00:10:28 Speaker_03
And so I do think it's a different experience of receiving hospice or palliative care in a prison setting than it would be in the community.

00:10:39 Speaker_04
Before the First Step Act, prisoners had to apply for compassionate release from their warden, who could choose to send it up the chain until it reached the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

00:10:50 Speaker_04
The BOP would review the requests and decide whether to approve or deny them. If they were approved, the application would be seen by a judge.

00:10:59 Speaker_03
In practice, what that meant was that someone might request from the warden that they go home because, let's say, they had a terminal cancer diagnosis or they're on dialysis or something of that variety. But the warden didn't have to respond.

00:11:14 Speaker_03
The warden could basically put that piece of paper in a drawer and forget about it. And if that happened, the prisoner had nothing that they could do about it.

00:11:23 Speaker_04
Between 2013 and 2017, the Marshall Project and the New York Times found that out of 5,400 requests for a compassionate release, the Bureau approved 6% of applications.

00:11:36 Speaker_04
They usually only approve them if an inmate had a terminal illness with less than one year to live. One report found that over a span of six years, 13% of prisoners died before finding out about their application. In 2018, the process changed.

00:11:56 Speaker_04
The First Step Act allowed inmates to petition a judge on their own if the BOP denied their application or if they didn't respond to it within 30 days.

00:12:07 Speaker_04
In the newsletter about the new law that Gary Settle was reading, Families Against Mandatory Minimums mentioned something called the Compassionate Release Clearinghouse.

00:12:18 Speaker_03
which was basically the system that they set up where they had pro bono lawyers and federal defenders who were willing to work with prisoners to help them apply for compassionate release.

00:12:28 Speaker_04
Gary didn't think he qualified, but he realized that many of the inmates at Butner did, like one man named Bobby Smith.

00:12:37 Speaker_06
He weighed about 90 pounds, and he had a feeding tube, and he had lung cancer because he couldn't eat, and he would have cough so bad that he would expel the feeding tube. He was one of the guys we were watching because he had good and bad days.

00:12:52 Speaker_06
Like I said, he had lung cancer, and he ended up getting pneumonia on top of that.

00:12:57 Speaker_06
And I asked him, hey, you know, at this organization, you know, they're willing to look at your stuff to see if you have any, as we would say, anything coming in court.

00:13:06 Speaker_06
And it was, like you don't find that many atheists in a foxhole, you're not gonna find many people on that floor that'll turn down help. If someone says, hey, you wanna take a shot to see if you can go home?

00:13:18 Speaker_04
Bobby was in the hospice ward at Butner. The doctors thought he had less than a year to live.

00:13:23 Speaker_06
He couldn't even get on the computer, he couldn't type, so I was interacting for him.

00:13:27 Speaker_04
Gary wrote an email to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, FAM for short, to see if they could help Bobby. FAM found a lawyer to help Bobby, but the lawyer wasn't able to get updated information from the BOP about how Bobby was doing.

00:13:44 Speaker_04
Gary would provide updates, telling the lawyer when one of Bobby's lungs had collapsed and when Bobby was taken to a hospital outside of the prison for treatment.

00:13:54 Speaker_03
The lawyer was able to get that information in front of a judge so that the judge could grant Mr. Smith release.

00:14:01 Speaker_04
Gary remembers that the judge made the decision while Bobby was still in the hospital. When Bobby got back to Butner, Gary told him he was going home. He says Bobby didn't know what to say.

00:14:14 Speaker_03
For Pham, they had always had this idea that if the law changed and if they could communicate to people in prison that they had the option to have legal representation and ask a judge directly that that could change access to compassionate release, but they didn't know for sure if that was true.

00:14:29 Speaker_03
So that was a really important case for them.

00:14:32 Speaker_06
Everybody kind of watched and that's kind of how everything took off and steamrolled and it became the thing that it became.

00:14:40 Speaker_04
Gary Settle estimates that he's helped more than 40 inmates go home. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. We'll be right back. Thanks to Squarespace for their support.

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00:16:52 Speaker_04
Gary Settle says that whenever he saw another inmate at Butner getting really sick, he would ask them if they wanted to try to apply for compassionate release.

00:17:01 Speaker_06
I got a little practice doing the paperwork, and that's a lot of what it is, just paperwork. And a lot of them just wouldn't have done it, just because they wouldn't know what to do.

00:17:11 Speaker_06
They wouldn't even know how to communicate or get their medical records, because that's part of it, I would get their medical records and then explain to the lawyers or FAM in the submission what's going on with them. I do a small part.

00:17:23 Speaker_06
I just help them with the paperwork in here and maybe communicate with the lawyers for them, because some of them aren't comfortable with the communication.

00:17:31 Speaker_06
And some of these guys that haven't been locked up very long don't know how to use the computer. So I just help with some of the bureaucratic stuff and bring attention to certain cases.

00:17:42 Speaker_06
And when you look at them on paper, once you understand what those words mean, These guys are really bad. Bad shape.

00:17:49 Speaker_04
Have you ever gone up to someone who's in really bad shape, very sick, and said, hey, I think we should work on an application for you. And have you ever had a guy say, I'm so sick.

00:18:05 Speaker_05
It's not even worth it. I'm too sick. I'm too tired. I don't have the energy to try to fight for this.

00:18:14 Speaker_06
Yeah, I have had that happen. And before the compassionate release law was changed, there was essentially no chance.

00:18:23 Speaker_06
But honestly, after the first couple cases here, and I'm sure it was like that in other places, when people actually saw, because we were shocked to see people going out the door.

00:18:34 Speaker_06
Um, I think a lot of guys who might've felt that way prior to the law change, not only did they, they changed their mind or their thought process of it.

00:18:43 Speaker_06
I think it actually gave a lot of guys a lot of, uh, of a mental boost to be stronger in their fight.

00:18:52 Speaker_05
Tell me about some of the other men that you've helped.

00:18:55 Speaker_06
There was a young kid here from Montana, and it struck me because he was, at the time, close to my son's age, in his late 20s. And he was half white and half Native American. His name was Victor. And he had a terrible cancer.

00:19:12 Speaker_06
I can't recall the name of it, but it attaches to the long bones of your body that actually had to remove his rib cage on the right, left side of his body. Well, To make a long story short, he came back with the cancer spread.

00:19:26 Speaker_06
And I had just got involved in this. He was a good friend of mine. So I began helping him. And right before the end, he made it about four or five months out on the street. And I spoke to him a couple of times.

00:19:39 Speaker_06
He was able to spend some time with his nieces and nephews and his family before he died.

00:19:50 Speaker_04
Gary says that once, one of the men he helped was granted compassionate release, but couldn't find anywhere to stay once he got out.

00:19:58 Speaker_06
The court would grant him release if he could have had a place for him to go. And he didn't, and he passed away here. And I don't really count him as a victory, even though he kind of got justification in the court that he should go home.

00:20:13 Speaker_06
And there's another gentleman. Richard Hawes is a real country guy, and he had hepatitis C real bad.

00:20:21 Speaker_06
And he was approached, I think, by one of the colleges in Kentucky and asked if he wanted to participate in this situation where they would give him a liver and kidney transplant from a person who had died who had hepatitis C already.

00:20:37 Speaker_06
And they did that. And then they gave him the new hepatitis C treatment to see if it would work. It would be like a clinical trial type thing. He did that. And then he lived. And the hepatitis was cured.

00:20:49 Speaker_06
But he had to take these drugs to suppress his immune system from attacking those organs over the years. Well, when COVID kicked in, we were making the point, hey, he can't take the vaccine.

00:21:01 Speaker_06
And he's also taking something that's lowering his immune system. And he got really, really sick.

00:21:07 Speaker_04
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers found that infection rates were five to six times higher in prison than in the general population. It's hard to know how many people in federal prisons like Butner died from COVID.

00:21:25 Speaker_04
The New York Times reported that the Justice Department stopped collecting and analyzing data about federal and state prison deaths in 2019.

00:21:35 Speaker_04
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Brigham Women's Hospital estimate that people in prison died at a rate over three times higher than people outside of prison in 2020.

00:21:49 Speaker_03
And so very quickly after COVID started to spread in prisons and it was clear how many people were getting sick and dying in prison from the virus, people saw this as an extraordinary and compelling circumstance that was impacting people's health.

00:22:06 Speaker_04
In 2020, the number of compassionate release requests went way up from just under 2,000 to almost 31,000. Richard Hodge, the man with hepatitis C, was one of those applicants.

00:22:20 Speaker_06
He got out and he's still doing good. I've communicated with him recently. He wrote a really heartwarming email about his family and, um, about the situation he was in out there. And it just makes the point of the whole term compassionate release.

00:22:40 Speaker_06
You know, he was able to get out because he was still during COVID. He might, he almost died the first time he got it. The second time he got it, he probably would have.

00:22:49 Speaker_04
Have there been cases where someone who you've tried to help have had their, has had their compassionate release denied?

00:22:58 Speaker_06
Yeah, nobody, this sounds bad, but the only person who I've ever been involved with who had a terminal diagnosis that was denied is me.

00:23:12 Speaker_04
In 1990, Gary Settle was 24 and living in Florida. He got an idea to rob a bank.

00:23:18 Speaker_06
We were, this was not a Cracker Jack organization. This is more like the Apple Dumpling Gang. It was me and some of my idiot buddies, because we were just a bunch of dumb kids. We weren't, we didn't have a lot of money.

00:23:33 Speaker_06
you know, this cops and robbers thing. It was just done more of a, well, I think I can do that type thing. So I remember laughing about it afterwards when I had dumped out a big bag full of money and then we went and proceeded to get drunk.

00:23:48 Speaker_06
That's just, that's how childish it was.

00:23:51 Speaker_04
He decided to do it again. By 1992, Gary was wanted by the FBI for robbing seven banks over a year and a half. The FBI said he was armed, dangerous, and ready to strike again. And what was your life like at the time?

00:24:08 Speaker_04
Were you just kind of like a, you know?

00:24:12 Speaker_06
I lived in Florida. I owned my own construction company. It wasn't a big company, but me and my buddy were the bosses. I lived in a nice place, had a nice car, a boat. Everything was golden.

00:24:27 Speaker_06
I drank a lot, and I think I'm what I always consider not just a functioning alcoholic, but I think I had some kind of alcohol dementia because For about a good 10 years, I drank a lot. I guess if I was sober, I was doing pretty good.

00:24:48 Speaker_06
I probably would have enjoyed it more. My parents lived in Florida. My son and my ex-wife were around. I was able to spend time with my son. Had a group of friends of mine around that I had led into this.

00:25:03 Speaker_06
None of them went to jail except the two guys that got caught and testified against me. I think I had a pretty decent life for a middle-class upbringing, you know, without any college. I thought I was doing pretty good.

00:25:17 Speaker_05
Did you know the FBI was looking for you?

00:25:21 Speaker_06
No. I was so naive about the law, I thought that once the robberies were over with and all the evidence was gone, that was the end of it. I had no idea there was conspiracy laws or someone could say he did that. I didn't know.

00:25:38 Speaker_04
So I got away with it. Okay, we're safe.

00:25:42 Speaker_06
Yep. Because I wore a mask and gloves, and I wasn't very smart. I just thought, No, I didn't give and I actually didn't even think about the consequences if I was caught because I was putting it on my scale of right and wrong.

00:25:59 Speaker_06
Well, I didn't hurt anybody. I just took some money. I wouldn't have thought that the consequences wouldn't be that bad if I was caught.

00:26:05 Speaker_04
How much did you steal in total?

00:26:08 Speaker_06
They say the government's contention is around $190,000 from the robberies. And then they allege I was involved in another robbery in another state, which I don't know what they're talking about. I wasn't charged with it. But not much.

00:26:24 Speaker_06
Nowhere near enough. But no amount of money would be enough for what I put my family through and what I did to those people just trying to work a job in those banks.

00:26:35 Speaker_04
What did you do with all the money?

00:26:37 Speaker_06
Well, most of it just got spent in a partying lifestyle. Most of it was spent on frivolous stuff.

00:26:48 Speaker_04
Nothing that you could show for it now? No.

00:26:51 Speaker_06
I mean, my liver might be a little enlarged, I guess. But no, nothing worthwhile at all.

00:27:01 Speaker_04
In 1992, while Gary was on a trip in Massachusetts, he was stopped by police for a traffic violation. When they ran his license, they found a warrant for his arrest.

00:27:13 Speaker_04
He was indicted on nine counts of bank robbery, one count of attempted bank robbery, one count of conspiracy, and ten counts of carrying a firearm while committing a violent crime. He was eventually convicted on the robbery and firearms charges.

00:27:33 Speaker_04
For the times that Gary had used a gun in a robbery, the judge gave him a total of 165 years, the mandatory minimum for the charges, plus another 12 years for the robbery charges. She ordered Gary to serve the 177 years consecutively.

00:27:53 Speaker_04
At the time, the judge said, I do not think this is an appropriate result, but I feel bound by the law. Less than 10 years earlier, in 1984, Congress had passed the Sentencing Reform Act.

00:28:09 Speaker_04
It was intended to prevent judges from choosing any random number of years in prison as a way to counteract a perception that judges were being too lenient. What did you think when you heard?

00:28:23 Speaker_06
I'd never been through anything like that. Probably the most vivid memory I have is my sentencing, and how those work as the judge, the prosecutor, some of the other court people. figure out the math, how much time you have.

00:28:39 Speaker_06
And they were throwing numbers around, no, it's 2,147 months with all the stacking. And it went on for a while. And it was real casual, like they were ordering lunch.

00:28:54 Speaker_06
And as they were going through the numbers, I was thinking, well, 120 months is 10 years. And they were sitting there talking about several thousand months.

00:29:05 Speaker_04
We'll be right back.

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00:29:54 Speaker_00
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00:30:28 Speaker_04
A few years after he was convicted and sentenced to 177 years, Gary Settle tried to break out of prison along with two other prisoners, including Woody Harrelson's father, who'd been convicted of murder.

00:30:42 Speaker_04
They made a rope and tried to climb over the wall. They gave up when a guard fired a warning shot. It made the news. Gary told us that he wasn't always a model prisoner or, quote, a big follower of the rules.

00:31:00 Speaker_06
I participated in illegal activities like gambling and just things like that. Like I said, you can have an altercation with someone. You can be in the wrong unit. You could, you can get, there's a lot of rules. There's a lot of rules.

00:31:14 Speaker_06
And to put it in perspective, I've been locked up for 32 years. I have had 14 incident reports. And 10 of those were in the first 10 years of my incarceration. So, I mean, it's not good. Some guys have none.

00:31:30 Speaker_06
But it's easier here to stay out of trouble because there's more stuff to concentrate on to do, more positive stuff to do. And you just don't have the energy for it either.

00:31:41 Speaker_06
Getting cancer treatment, so it's just time to just rest and let my body heal itself when it can. I just, I'm tired of, I got tired of fighting with them about stuff. So now I'm just trying to do what, do the right thing.

00:31:57 Speaker_06
I've come to be more accepting of my responsibility. And no matter how much I don't approve of the way the law is structured that has me, it's a strange law that has me in this situation. Well, my actions have me in this situation.

00:32:13 Speaker_06
But I made the choices that put myself in this position, ultimately. I can't make it better.

00:32:21 Speaker_05
How old are you?

00:32:22 Speaker_06
I am 58 years old.

00:32:25 Speaker_05
You're not that old.

00:32:27 Speaker_06
Well, I feel that old. I was relatively healthy until 2017, and then I kind of started falling apart since then. I've had knee replacements. I got problems with my wrist, and just a bunch of different things going on.

00:32:40 Speaker_06
Not as bad as some guys, but bad enough, and it makes me feel old. I guess I feel old, too, because I feel I've had a fruitless life.

00:32:55 Speaker_04
In 2020, a lawyer friend told Gary that he should apply for compassionate release for himself. At the time, his cancer was in remission, but Gary also had a thyroid disorder and was at risk for severe COVID.

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She helped him file a motion in January 2021. The motion read,

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During his almost three decades of incarceration, Mr. Settle has grown from a reckless young man into a thoughtful middle-aged man, known for the meaningful relationships he builds with others.

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His lawyers argued that Gary's work helping other inmates get compassionate release demonstrated his sincere rehabilitation. The application also included letters from the people Gary had helped.

00:33:44 Speaker_04
Gary wrote his own letter and said, I have a very small family, but I dream of an opportunity to be part of their lives. About a month later, a judge denied Gary's motion.

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He said that because Gary wasn't terminal and was independent enough to care for himself, he did not qualify for compassionate release, even with his risk for COVID. Almost two weeks later, Gary found out that his cancer had returned.

00:34:15 Speaker_04
In September of 2021, Gary says he was given a prognosis of 18 months. He applied for compassionate release again. Until then, he had kept his cancer secret from his mother. But this time, he would have to tell her.

00:34:32 Speaker_04
She would be the person he would live with if he was released. He asked her to come visit so he could tell her in person.

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She took the diagnosis to heart because she had to see me. So I wanted her to come here so she could talk to me and see me face to face because I didn't want to be on the institutional phone. They're all recorded.

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I didn't want to say something that could be misconstrued. I wanted her to see me. Gary's mother is 84. Still working on her yard, cancer survivor. My father died of cancer.

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early on in my incarceration while I was locked down because of not being a model prisoner. So she went through that by herself. You'll be surprised how many people, probably you wouldn't be, how many guys in prison you meet are mama's boys like me.

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After he was arrested in 1992, he remembers his mother visiting him in the county jail.

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First thing she said, through the glass, because it was with the phone, she looked at me and mouthed the words, did you do it? And I looked at her and I said, yes, and nodded.

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And she put her head down and then brought her head up and has been with me the whole time ever since.

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How often do you get to talk to her?

00:35:53 Speaker_06
Every day.

00:35:55 Speaker_05
When was the last time you saw her?

00:35:57 Speaker_06
Let's see, I think it was May.

00:36:03 Speaker_04
Gary filed his second application for release in 2022. His prostate cancer was now stage four, and scans indicated that it had spread to his spine and lymph nodes. That May, he tested positive for COVID.

00:36:21 Speaker_04
Gary's lawyers filed his motion for compassionate release and requested to expedite it because of his COVID infection. The judge denied the request. He said he didn't see any evidence of rehabilitation and found Gary's remorse disingenuous.

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He was concerned that Gary had never directly apologized to his victims. Gary told us he doesn't know how he would have He's continued to help other inmates at Butner with their own applications.

00:36:55 Speaker_06
It's a bittersweet thing. It's great to see someone go home like some kid went home yesterday. It's just sometimes I have to think, you know, I hope they're going to go out there and do good.

00:37:05 Speaker_06
You know, I think they are, but it's that, OK, he's getting out. And I'm being completely frank here. You know, it's great that people are getting let out, but how about me? You know, it's selfish to say, but it's a thought that I do have.

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Doesn't discourage me from doing it because in the end of the day, or end of my day, at least I'm trying to do something positive. And I can't not do something looking at these guys.

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If anybody can look at these guys up here and have even the slightest ability to help them and not do it, there's something wrong with them.

00:37:41 Speaker_04
So where are you in your, you've been denied release, compassionately, twice. Is that it? Can you, can you apply again?

00:37:51 Speaker_06
My, the many great lawyers that were involved with my, the efforts on my behalf, Julianna and Donnie, and there's a bunch of them, really good people, Mary Price mainly.

00:38:04 Speaker_06
They've advised me that my option right now is what's, they're trying to, they're submitting a petition for executive clemency right now. That's what's, and it's gonna have attached the prior motions and all the medical reports and everything.

00:38:17 Speaker_06
So that's what's being done right now.

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How far are you into your sentence right now?

00:38:23 Speaker_06
I, a couple weeks ago, I completed 32 years straight.

00:38:28 Speaker_04
You have 140 years left. Gary was told he had 18 months left to live in 2021. We spoke to him at Butner in September, 2024.

00:38:38 Speaker_06
It's a tough, tough, you know, who'd have thought I was going to get cancer and, you know, and, I don't know about how the diagnosis stuff works.

00:38:49 Speaker_06
I know, um, I've watched guys with my same cancer, so I kind of have an idea where things are going, you know, going forward. I could be worse. I'm a mentor in a pain management class here.

00:39:03 Speaker_06
And we had a class yesterday, and some of the new guys, a new class, and some of the guys were listing their issues. And I said then, I didn't really want to say what I have, because I felt, because these guys, as I said, again, I keep saying this.

00:39:18 Speaker_06
I mean, I know hospitals are pleasant places, but there's some guys in bad shape here. And some of the ailments these guys are dealing with on a day-to-day basis, besides pancreatic cancer and all these other things, could be worse.

00:39:32 Speaker_04
Gary says recently he helped a man with a rare brain cancer get out. He also helped another inmate whose application had gotten stuck waiting for review by the Bureau of Prisons. You know, why do you keep doing this?

00:39:50 Speaker_06
I can't give you a specific answer other than I feel like I'm compelled to because one, it's very empowering to see somebody go home from a cancer floor. As I said, it's how I was raised. And I don't know, 100%.

00:40:17 Speaker_06
Part of it, I guess, I'll be frank, part of my motivation is I know that a lot of people that are involved in the criminal justice system don't like to see people get released.

00:40:26 Speaker_06
I've always thought that in some of these submissions that we should take a picture and just show the judge, look at this guy. Because what they rely on, like they did in my case essentially, is I'm a threat to society.

00:40:37 Speaker_06
You see these guys up here, they're not a threat to nothing. They can barely get out of bed, some of them. And most of us just want to go home and see our families and try to mend fences. That's what most of us want to do, spend time with our families.

00:40:58 Speaker_04
Since 2019, over 5,000 people across the country have been granted compassionate release. You can learn more about Gary Settle in Anna Altman's piece, The Quality of Mercy, in the Atavist magazine. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me.

00:41:24 Speaker_04
Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti.

00:41:38 Speaker_04
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00:42:02 Speaker_04
These are special episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr, telling stories from the last 10 years of working together. And at the end of each episode, we share things we've been enjoying.

00:42:12 Speaker_04
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00:42:27 Speaker_04
We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media podcast network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Support for criminal comes from better health.

00:43:02 Speaker_04
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