Why is disgraced KC pharmacist Robert Courtney getting early release from prison?

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons wrote victims of disgraced former pharmacist Robert Courtney last week, telling them that Courtney would be transferred to a halfway house on July 16. After that, the letter says, Courtney will remain in custody, in home detention, until 2027.

The Bureau of Prisons made the decision, acting on a directive from U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

Courtney’s release has been shrouded in mystery. On Tuesday, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office here could not confirm or deny that Courtney would be released. Apparently, the Bureau of Prisons could not be bothered to notify local authorities of its decision in the case.

The Bureau of Prisons began looking for inmates to release in March after the COVID-19 storm broke. No one appears to have told Courtney he was under consideration, though, because his lawyers filed a brief last Thursday asking a federal judge — not the Bureau of Prisons — to release their client.

And, in fact, the local office of the U.S. Attorney was getting ready to ask the judge to keep Courtney in prison, blissfully unaware that the Bureau of Prisons was already getting ready to release him.

The right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing.

That’s horrific in Courtney’s case. It means a federal judge, and the families of his victims, have no say in whether he spends more time in prison.

For nearly a decade, starting in the early 1990s, Courtney diluted medicines he prepared for seriously ill patients, including many with cancer. He watered down the specialty drugs to make more money.

At one point, Courtney admitted to diluting dozens of medications, including drugs to treat AIDS, cancer and other diseases. More than 4,000 patients may have been impacted. Dozens of sick people in our area died believing their medicines, not their pharmacist, had failed them.

The cruelty of Courtney’s scam remains seared in local memory. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In 2019, and continuing this year, he launched a series of requests to be freed early. “Since being sentenced I have suffered a stroke, three heart attacks, cancer, and two years of internal bleeding,” he wrote in March, even as the government was thinking about letting him go.

Courtney also claimed he helped authorities with criminal investigations while behind bars, suffered from solitary confinement, and showed remorse for his crimes — all reasons for early release.

“I cannot excuse myself for the horrible crimes I committed,” Courtney wrote. “However, I’m a changed man, a man whose punishment has worked.”

Sentencing reform is meant to bring punishments more in line with crimes and to reduce the strain on the federal prison system. We support both goals. We also endorse early release as a way to combat COVID-19 infections in prison.

But Robert Courtney’s crimes were especially horrendous. He was a “real-life monster in a white coat,” one victim’s family member testified in 2002. Greed and arrogance overtook his duty to his patients, and his profession, and this community.

Courtney’s early release is wrong. The Bureau of Prisons must be much more transparent about its decision-making process in this case, and other cases too.

Who else has been released to home confinement? How does the Bureau of Prisons decide? Who gets left behind? Why? And why are judges and victims’ families members excluded from the discussion?

These are not minor concerns. On Tuesday, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told The Star that Courtney’s release reflects “gross inequality” in the nation’s justice system. He’s right.

The Justice Department must explain itself, and do better. Courtney’s victims — and all of us — deserve some answers.

This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 1:31 PM.