The Federal Bureau of Prisons reached a grim milestone on Saturday: 100 inmates have died from coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic (article available here). Among the dead are fathers and mothers, daughters and sons and brothers and sisters — none of whom were sentenced to death.
Of the hundred dead, three female inmates have died from the virus. The first was Andrea Circle Bear, a 30-year-old mother who gave birth to her sixth child while on a ventilator. The bureau reports that only one federal prison employee, Charlynn Phillips, who was employed at Butner, died in June after contracting the virus. The bureau, however, does not count the death of one other staff member, Robin Grubbs, who passed away in April. Grubbs, a 39-year-old case manager at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, posthumously tested positive for the virus. However, her cause of death was never determined to be due to COVID-19 because an autopsy was not completed.