Legal News

Dreier Doing Time Alone: ?You Could Lose Your Mind in Three Weeks?

By Dan Slater

Dow Jones Newswires’ reporter Chad Bray recently gave us another feed from the Marc Dreier hearing, where earlier today a federal magistrate judge ordered that Dreier be detained. Click here for previous blog posts on the Marc Dreier situation.

During the hearing, Dreier’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, asked the judge to move Dreier into the general population at Metropolitan Correctional Center (pictured, though not well) or to another facility.

Shargel said his client, as a new inmate, is essentially being held alone in cell 24 hours a day with no telephone calls, no visitors and no reading material. According to Shargel, he’s only been allowed to shower once or twice since he was brought in. The arrangement has made it difficult, apparently, for Dreier to meet with Paul Weiss’s Mark Pomerantz — the receiver charged with overseeing the finances of Dreier LLP.

Shargel said he was told the Bureau of Prisons needs a bed in the general population to open up before Dreier is moved there. Before moving him, the bureau also apparently wants to evaluate Dreier, including looking into whether he has gang ties. However, it could be as long as three weeks before the BOP finishes evaluating him or a bed is free.

The AUSA on the case, Jonathan Streeter, said he would contact the BOP to request Dreier be allowed to meet with the receiver. The judge also said he would call the staff attorney for the MCC to see what he can learn about Dreier’s housing situation.

Shargel, for one, isn’t happy about the prospect of a three-week wait for his client. “You could lose your mind in three weeks,” Shargel said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).