Varsity Blues parent requests home confinement sentence

Michelle Janavs, a USC-affiliated parent in the college admissions scandal, filed a motion in federal court Wednesday asking for her prison sentence to be modified in light of the spread of the coronavirus and unique medical circumstances.

Janavs was sentenced in February to five months in prison and two years of supervised release with a fine of $250,000 for paying for her older daughter’s admission to USC as a false beach volleyball recruit and for falsifying both her daughters’ ACT score reports. She is scheduled to begin her sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas May 7.

In the motion, Janavs’ defense stated that her preexisting health conditions would increase her likelihood of contracting the virus, thereby posing a risk to Janavs, her fellow inmates and prison employees. While the section of the motion identifying her conditions was redacted from the document before public release, the defense stated that Janavs would also be at risk of developing severe medical problems as a result of the coronavirus if she became infected.

“If Ms. Janavs were to become infected with COVID-19, there is a high likelihood that she would have to be hospitalized to prevent the rapid deterioration seen in other COVID-19 patients,” the motion read. “The resources needed to save Ms. Janavs’ life could be, and should be, used for someone else.”

The defense argued that the prison environment is conducive to the transmission of the coronavirus, citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that recommend enhanced sanitization and eliminating communal facilities to curtail the virus’s spread and accusing the Bureau of Prisons of continued negligence for its failure to maintain CDC standards for the virus’s containment. The motion quoted data regarding the number of confirmed cases in Bureau of Prisons settings, which has seen an increase of more than 43,000% since the first instances of the coronavirus in federal incarceration facilities were reported early last month. 

“The Eighth Amendment bars ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ which includes deliberate

indifference to unsafe, life-threatening conditions and punishments,” the motion read. “Given the rampant, uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 in the BOP, and the acute risks that infection poses to Ms. Janavs, incarceration would be grossly disproportionate to the severity of her crime.”

With the motion, Janavs’ defense submitted a letter from the Office of the U.S. Attorney General recommending that nonviolent offenders with increased risk of contracting the coronavirus be released from federal penitentiaries and permitted to serve their sentences in home confinement. It also attached a notice from the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration alleging that the Bureau of Prisons had violated safety protocol in its failure to quarantine incarcerated workers who showed symptoms of the coronavirus.
Janavs pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering for her role in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal.