RALEIGH, N.C. _ Richard Cephas, the federal inmate who escaped prison in April out of fear of catching COVID-19, got 18 months added to his sentence Tuesday _ more than prosecutors sought.
In stinging remarks, U.S. District Court Judge James C. Dever III told Cephas that he showed disrespect for the law and caused federal marshals in three states to hunt him down during the chaotic early weeks of the pandemic.
"You decided, essentially, to engage in self-help. Vigilantism," Dever said. "You deserve just punishment, and just punishment is what you will get."
Cephas escaped from federal prison in Butner and spent nearly three weeks on the run, explaining while still in hiding that he fled to avoid death by coronavirus. Still in hiding, he contacted The News & Observer from an undisclosed hideout and said, "I signed up for a jail sentence, not a death sentence."
At the time, the Federal Correctional Complex had one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the nation, and Cephas, serving a drug sentence, feared his age and weakened immune system made him especially vulnerable.
"I was under extreme duress and stress," he told Dever on Tuesday, apologizing. "I'm not trying to escape responsibility for anything. I didn't know what else to do."
His federal public defender, Halerie Costello, argued that Cephas surrendered on his own and had no history of this behavior, having been allowed to transfer to Butner with a bus ticket and cab fare. She asked for 12 months and 1 day for the escape charge.
"This offense, your honor, was truly driven by fear," she said.
But Dever noted that Cephas had applied for compassionate release due to his medical condition and fled the prison before seeing the process through. He also tried to negotiate terms of his return to prison before turning himself in.
"It's outrageous," Dever said, ordering the 18 months, which is two months longer than prosecutors sought.
Cephas started serving a 5 {-year sentence in 2017, convicted in Delaware along with eight other defendants arrested in a federal drug conspiracy investigation nicknamed "Operation Bear Trap." He served time in Kentucky before his transfer to Butner last year.
At the time of his escape on April 1, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had not reported any COVID-19 cases at Butner. But two weeks later, the agency confirmed that 48 inmates and 28 staff members had tested positive for the virus, according to a public defender's memo filed Monday. Four inmates had died.
By the beginning of May, the infection total had jumped to the 208 inmates, 13 staff members and six deaths.
By July, the prison had 25 confirmed deaths, more than any other in the country, and the distinction of being the only federal correctional center to have a staffer die from COVID-19, the N&O reported with The Marshall Project.
In his April interview with the N&O, Cephas said he was told the prison did not have enough soap to go around _ a fact he confirmed through his work as an orderly. Masks and gloves had not been issued, and prison staff had no mask requirement until five days after Cephas fled Butner.
A day before he escaped, Cephas used a Bureau of Prisons email telling a family member that he "might have you pick me up," according to the criminal complaint filed by a U.S. marshal.
On the day he fled, court documents said, Cephas called his wife and said, "I just want to save my life that's all."
As of Monday, the BOP reported 1,737 inmates and 778 staffers with positive COVID-19 tests. Of those infected, two staffers and 126 inmates have died, two of the prisoners while on home confinement. The medium-security unit that housed Cephas is now reporting only one positive case and more than 200 who have recovered.
Cephas surrendered to authorities nearly three weeks after his escape, turning himself in at a courthouse in Delaware. Federal authorities have been skeptical that nervousness over COVID-19 prompted his flight.
"Mr. Cephas' decision to escape federal custody is nothing more than an opportunistic move to use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to cut his prison term short," U.S. Attorney Robert Higdon Jr. said in an April news release.
