Richard Evans walked out of federal prison Thursday afternoon, but he was anything but a free man.
Evans, a 74-year-old former cancer doctor in Houston who spent nearly two years behind bars for illegally peddling pain pills to patients, has a five-inch and growing malignant tumor on his neck that physicians say will kill him.
Late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt of Houston signed what is believed to be the first judicial order freeing a prisoner under the new First Step Act’s “compassionate release” measure.
“The court has considered the factors … to the extent they are applicable and finds that Evans has presented ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons’ to justify a reduction of his sentence,” Judge Hoyt wrote, converting the remaining three years of Evans’ sentence to supervised release.
Houston criminal defense attorney David Gerger and two of his law partners, Samy Khalil and Ashlee McFarland, filed an emergency petition last Friday seeking Evans release under the newly enacted First Step Act, which was a major legislative initiative of President Trump.
“It is shocking to see what the Bureau of Prisons allowed to happen to our client – absolute neglect,” Gerger told The Texas Lawbook in an interview late Thursday. “The power of this new law is that we now have an independent court option to review the facts.
“Thankfully, we had an independent judge and fair-minded prosecutor,” he said. “Without this, our client would die in prison.”
Evans was charged in 2015 with operating an illegal scheme in which he and an elderly pharmacist sold 1.6 million pain pills – mostly oxycodone and hydrocodone – over a span of three years.
A jury convicted Evans of 19 counts of distribution and related charges. Judge Hoyt sentenced him to five years in prison in 2017.
But last summer, Evans noticed a small two-centimeter mass on the right side of his neck and sought medical attention from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The BOP, however, did not have a surgeon examine Evans until Dec. 19. The doctor recommended “immediate excision and biopsy of the neck mass on the grounds that it might be cancerous,” according to court documents.
Even then, prison officials did not take Evans to be biopsied until Jan. 14. Three days later, the BOP received a pathology report diagnosing the mass as a malignant melanoma.
Sixteen more days passed by before prison officials had an oncologist examine Evans and confirm the diagnosis.
That same day, Jan. 31, Evans asked the BOP for a reduction of his sentence to time served so that he could get treatment on his own. The warden never responded to Evans’ request, according to court records.
“Basically, the Bureau of Prisons said that Dr. Evans was not sick enough,” Gerger said.