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(NEW YORK) — Three Bureau of Prisons employees at United States Penitentiary Thompson in Illinois have had to go to the hospital over the past two weeks, according to the local union president, prompting two members of Congress to write a letter to the agency questioning how mail for prisoners is processed.

“We write with concern about reports of unsafe conditions for correctional officers in opening mail for incarcerated persons,” the letter written by Rep. Cherri Bustos, D-Ill., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ili., and obtained by ABC News, said.

“We know that it is critical for incarcerated persons to have access to correspondence while serving their sentences. Unfortunately, mail is also one of the ways in which drug contraband can be brought into correctional facilities,” the lawmakers wrote.

One staff member was hospitalized on Friday. The drug involved and the officer’s condition are unknown.

On March 17, a corrections officer was sorting mail and 19 pieces of mail were soaked in amphetamines, according to USP Thompson Union President Jon Zumkehr.

The staff member started “throwing up and having a violent reaction and was rushed to medical — his vitals were off the chart,” Zumkehr said.

A day later, another staff member was rushed to the hospital after being exposed to synthetic marijuana, he said.

In 2020, the Bureau of Prisons started a pilot program to convert mail to electronic scans at some facilities, to combat drug smuggling through official correspondence, according to the two lawmakers.

Zumkehr said the program was ended due to funding concerns.

“Staff shouldn’t have a price tag on their life,” he said.

Shane Fausey, president of the National Council of Prison Locals 33 told ABC News the substances officers are dealing with, including fentanyl, are both very dangerous and prevalent.

“It’s a matter of safety. It’s a matter of when you deal with substances like fentanyl, car fentanyl, they’re so hazardous a minuscule amount is going to kill someone if we don’t somehow stop it from entering our prisons,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement to ABC News it would respond directly to members of Congress and their staff.

“Out of respect and deference to Members, we do not share our Congressional correspondence with media,” it said.

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(NEW YORK) — Trevor Reed’s family said President Joe Biden may have saved their son’s life, doing everything he could to bring Reed home, in their first interview since seeing their son on U.S. soil.

“Ultimately it was President Biden,” Joey Reed, Trevor Reed’s father, said in an interview Friday on Good Morning America. “We’ve said all along if we could just speak to the man, we think he would make this happen and that’s exactly what happened. He did everything that we had said he would do and it’s amazing and we can’t thank him enough.”

He added, “We believe he may have saved Trevor’s life.”

Reed, a former Marine from Texas, was released from Russian prison on Wednesday as part of an international prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia. He had been held in Russia since 2019.

Trevor Reed’s family said they met with him on Thursday for a few hours. His mother, Paula Reed, said it was the first time they got to hug him, saying “it was heaven.”

The Reeds said they received a phone call early Thursday morning from Roger Carsten, the presidential envoy on hostage affairs, who handed the phone to Trevor Reed, who was on a plane headed to the U.S.

Reed was arrested in Russia, while on a trip visiting his girlfriend, after Russian authorities alleged he grabbed the wheel of a police car and assaulted a police officer while drunk.

Reed denied the allegations and maintained his innocence. A year later he was sentenced to nine years in prison. After several appeals he was moved from a Moscow prison to a remote prison colony.

Reed was exchanged for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, a convicted drug trafficker.

Reed’s parents said their son has a long road to recovery, in an interview with ABC News’ David Muir on Wednesday.

He is currently in a medical facility receiving care, but his family did not have a complete update on his health on Friday.

“We don’t really have a whole lot of answers yet. He’s getting testing done. He is at a top-notch medical facility and getting great care so we’re excited about that but we won’t really know more for a few days,” Paula Reed said.

The Reeds lobbied for years for the U.S. to negotiate for their son’s release, even personally pleading with Biden.

Other Americans, including Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, are still being held in Russia.

“Our hearts go out to them and we can only imagine how disappointed they are that their loved ones didn’t get to come home,” Paula Reed said.

She added that Whelan’s release was the first thing her son brought up when the family spoke.

“He said he didn’t feel well and we said, ‘Do you mean physically?’ He said, ‘No, mom. I feel terrible that Paul still there and I’m here.’ And he said when I get better, I’m going to start advocating for them to bring Paul home right away,'” Paula Reed said.

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(MIAMI) — Three Florida correctional officers were arrested on murder charges for allegedly beating an inmate to death, while a fourth remains at large, authorities said Thursday.

Christopher Rolon, 29, Kirk Walton, 34, and Ronald Connor, 24, were arrested Thursday following a monthslong investigation of the fatal incident at the Dade Correctional Institution in Miami-Dade County, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said.

They were arrested on multiple charges, including second-degree murder, conspiracy, aggravated battery of an elderly adult and cruel treatment of a detainee, jail records show. Attorney information was not immediately available.

Additional information on the fourth correctional officer being sought by law enforcement was not provided.

The incident occurred on the morning of Feb. 14, before the inmate was scheduled to be transferred to a correctional facility in Lake County, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which led the investigation into the death along with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

After the inmate reportedly threw urine on an officer, he was placed in handcuffs and removed from his cell in the mental health unit, at which point the officers “began to beat him,” the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said in a statement.

“The inmate was beaten so badly he had to be carried to the transport van,” the agency said.

The inmate, whose name was not released by the agency, was placed in a compartment of the van alone. During a stop in Ocala, an over 300-mile drive from Dade Correctional Institution, he was found dead, authorities said.

The inmate’s death was caused by a punctured lung leading to internal bleeding, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He also had injuries to his face and torso “consistent with a beating,” the agency said.

The incident initially led the Florida Department of Corrections to place 10 officers on administrative leave. One officer also resigned over it, the department said.

“What happened in this case is completely unacceptable and is not a representation of our system or of Dade Correctional Institution as a whole,” Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Ricky Dixon said in a statement Thursday. “The staff involved in this case failed, and as an agency we will not stand for this.”

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, is holding a press briefing Friday afternoon with the Florida Department of Corrections and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to share further details on the criminal charges.

“Staff misconduct, abuse or criminal behavior have no place in Florida’s correctional system,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. “Inmates should not be subject to forms of ‘back alley’ justice which are actions in violation of Florida law.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit on Thursday against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

It is seeking $3 million in fines and penalties over Manafort’s alleged failure to file reports disclosing more than 20 offshore bank accounts he controlled in Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the U.K. between 2006 and 2014.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida, notes that the Treasury Department previously sent him a notice of its assessment of the penalties in July of 2020.

He was pardoned by former President Donald Trump five months later in December of 2020 for his tax fraud, conspiracy and obstruction convictions stemming from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The DOJ’s lawsuit indicates that prosecutors don’t believe Trump’s pardon of Manafort encompasses his failure to file Foreign Bank Account reports in 2013 and 2014.

ABC News has reached out to an attorney for Manafort for comment.

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(SPRINGFIELD, Ill.) — A Black woman was finally named valedictorian at her Illinois high school nearly four decades after her graduation.

Tracey Meares, a law professor at Yale University, was a star student at Springfield High School in Springfield, Illinois. But when she graduated in 1984, she was not awarded the title of valedictorian despite having the highest academic ranking in her class, she said. Her story is now the subject of a new documentary, “No Title for Tracey.”

Meares would have been the first Black female valedictorian in the school’s history, but she was not awarded the title. Instead, the school did away with the valedictorian and salutatorian titles that year and Meares was recognized with a group as “top students.” The school went back to official titles in 1992.

“As a 17-year-old, achieving something like being valedictorian is probably the biggest thing…It was incredibly disappointing,” Meares told “Good Morning America.”

Meares said the snub was “very confusing” at first but she later processed the great lengths the school went to to deny her the title.

“I didn’t talk about it ever…Many of my best friends that I have known since I was an adult have asked me why I never told and I didn’t want to talk about it. It was terrible. It was really hard,” she reflected.

Meares went on to study engineering at the University of Illinois and then attended the University of Chicago Law School.

This year, her sister, Dr. Nicole Florence, a first-time filmmaker, turned Meares’ story into a documentary to spotlight the impact of structural racism.

On April 16, after a screening of the documentary in her hometown, Springfield Public Schools District 186 Superintendent Jennifer Gill presented Meares with the valedictorian medal — a surprise to Meares.

“I felt some pride and happiness that my parents who are sitting in the front row could see this happening because they were denied that 30 years ago,” Meares said. “I felt sadness that my grandparents weren’t there.”

Gill said she was “happy” to meet Meares and right this wrong.

“When we know better, we do better. By meeting Tracey and hearing about her lived experience, we know that honoring her with this title means so much more,” Gill told “GMA.” “We want every student to have a feeling of belonging in all aspects of school and a sense of becoming as they leave our schools with a plan for college and career. It is our responsibility to ensure that our system supports students in reaching their full potential. We have seen that high school experiences can have a profound, lifelong impact.”

“It was an honor to have Tracey here and a privilege to learn from such an accomplished alumna,” she added.

The recognition 38 years later is a gesture that Meares says she appreciates.

“Institutionally, there are people who are making an effort to to acknowledge that people are thinking wrong. That was harmful. And it wasn’t harmful, just to me as an individual. It was harmful to the community,” she said. “The thing to take away is for people to understand the ways in which discrimination can operate at a disproportionate rate at a structural level and that its downstream effects are enduring.”

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(NEW YORK) — Police arrived at a home in Selkirk, New York, just before 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2020 to find a husband and wife dead. Bhupinder Saran, 58, killed his wife, Sarbjit Saran, 58, and then took his own life, police said.

It was not the first time police had been to the home. A year earlier, officers were called to a domestic violence incident, and there had been an order of protection against the husband.

On Thursday, New York State Inspector General Lucy Lang revealed that Sarbjit Saran had informed her employer, the state’s information technology office, of the trouble at home, but she received no help — a violation of state domestic violence policies.

“When she reached out for help, it fell on deaf ears,” Lang said during a news conference in Albany.

“This investigation found that despite ITS’ awareness that its employee had reported that she was a victim of domestic violence, ITS did not follow its Domestic Violence and the Workplace Policy in a manner that was responsive to her needs as a victim or that promoted workplace safety,” the inspector general’s report said.

Incidents of violence, sexual violence and stalking increased in New York during the pandemic, when calls to the state’s domestic and sexual violence hotline increased 45%.

Lang called Sarbjit Saran’s death “an utter tragedy” and said she should have been able to count on her employer.

“She gave 30 years of her life to the state,” Lang said. “So much of what happened here is that warning signs were disregarded, and that is a failure of education, a failure of training and a reason why domestic violence has for years existed outside the public sphere.”

Lang announced her office would audit every state agency to make sure they understand their obligations when an employee mentions being the victim of violence by an intimate partner.

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(NEW YORK) — Federal agents improperly questioned alleged New York City subway shooter Frank James this week, directed him to sign certain documents and took multiple swabs of his DNA, defense attorneys said in a court filing Thursday.

James, 62, allegedly set off a smoke grenade on a Manhattan-bound N train approaching 36th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, before opening fire and shooting 10 people in what police called the worst disruption to the commute in New York since the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Tuesday, without alerting his lawyers, FBI agents entered his cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn “questioned him, took multiple buccal swabs of his DNA, and directed him to sign certain documents,” according to a letter to the court from Mia Eisner-Grynberg and Deirdre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders of New York.

“Contrary to standard practice, the government committed this intrusion absent advance notice to counsel, depriving us of an opportunity to be heard or to be present. Neither did the government provide subsequent notice to counsel. The agents did not provide Mr. James with a copy of the warrant or a receipt, in violation of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure,” the letter said.

The attorneys said the government failed to explain why it deviated from standard procedure and only provided a copy of a search warrant when the attorneys asked after the fact. They accused the government of violating James’ constitutional rights.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, which has charged James with one terror-related count, declined to comment.

Prosecutors were given until early next week to respond.

The defense attorneys said they would seek to suppress whatever statements James made to the agents this past Tuesday and asked the judge to order the government to turn over a copy of the affidavit that served as the basis for the search.

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(FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.) — Jury selection in the death penalty case of confessed Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz lapsed into disarray after potential jurors allegedly mouthed expletives and threats to the defendant in the courtroom and the presiding judge admitted committing a legal error that nearly derailed the process.

Just days after Judge Elizabeth Scherer granted a motion by prosecutors to scrap jury selection in the high profile case and start from scratch, she reversed her order on Wednesday upon hearing a counter argument from Cruz’s lawyers. The case began on April 4 in Broward County, Florida.

Scherer admitted that she made an error back on April 5, the second day of jury selection, when she asked would-be jurors if they could follow the law if picked to serve on the case and then dismissed 11 who said they could not.

David Weinstein, a former federal and state prosecutor in Florida, told ABC News on Thursday that Scherer made a mistake by asking the question. He said her inquiries in the initial phase of jury selection should have been limited to questions about whether the potential jurors had a hardship that prevented them from serving on the case, which is expected to last four to six months.

“That was all that they were supposed to be inquiring into,” said Weinstein, who is not involved in the case but is following it closely.

He said the more probing questions like the one the judge asked should have been reserved for the voir dire phase of jury selection, when prosecutors and defense attorneys are given the chance to grill jury candidates on their answers.

“Each side is given the opportunity to rehabilitate you, to ask, ‘When you said you couldn’t follow the law, did you really understand what the judge was asking you? What do you mean you can’t follow the law?'” Weinstein said.

Defense attorneys filed a motion accusing the court of committing double jeopardy and asked that the death penalty phase of the case be declared a mistrial and that Cruz be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

To remedy her mistake, Scherer reversed her earlier ruling and ordered that the 11 jurors she dismissed to be summoned back to court on Monday so lawyers can question them about their answers.

In her earlier ruling, Scherer also said she was dismissing the 243 would-be jurors who had already been qualified for a pool to seat the jury from. That decision has also been reversed.

Scherer said 20 jurors, including eight alternates, will eventually be chosen to recommend whether the 23-year-old Cruz, who has pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, will be sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The judge’s mistake wasn’t the only controversy to erupt this week in the case.

On Tuesday, a potential juror disrupted the proceedings when he entered the courtroom and allegedly mouthed expletives and threats to Cruz, who was seated at the defense table. The outburst apparently inspired other would-be jurors in the courtroom to make similar threats to Cruz and prompted bailiffs to press Cruz against a wall to protect him.

Scherer described that particular group of jury candidates as “belligerent” and dismissed them all.

Cruz pleaded guilty in October to committing the 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. During the hearing attended by loved ones of the 17 he killed, Cruz said he wished it was up to the survivors of the shooting to determine whether he lived or died.

“I’m very sorry for what I did,” Cruz said at his plea hearing. “I can’t live with myself sometimes.”

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(NEW YORK) — A new red flag warning has been issued from Nevada to Oklahoma where 60 mph winds and very dry conditions could create a dangerous fire situation.

The Southwest will continue to be hammered by gusty winds until the end of the week.

The critical fire weather in the Southwest continues with red flag warnings in effect across seven states from Nevada to Texas. Dry airmass remains in place across the region with relative humidity in the single digits and surface winds 20 mph or higher; isolated gusts could reach to 60 mph.

A cold blast brought wind chills in the teens and 20s from the Midwest to the Northeast Thursday morning.

Another cold morning is expected on Friday in the Northeast, with winter-like conditions expected.

The weather will be warmer in the Northeast over the weekend.

Gusty winds and a cold air mass across the Northeast region will make it feel like temps are in the 20s and 30s.

These dry gusty winds are elevating fire danger across parts of the Northeast Friday, with red flag warnings in effect from Delaware to Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia and much of New Jersey.

A new storm system is headed into the Heartland on Friday with severe weather possible, including tornadoes, from Northern Texas to Nebraska, with an enhanced risk in place just north of Oklahoma City, across eastern Kansas and into southeastern Nebraska.

Oklahoma City, Wichita and Tulsa are some of the cities in the bull’s-eye for possible tornadoes and huge hail.

This severe weather threat moves east into the Midwest by Saturday.

Paducah, St. Louis and just south of Chicago are the areas in the bull’s-eye for damaging winds, large hail and isolated tornados on Saturday.

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(GILBERT, Ariz.) — The winning ticket for the $473.1 million Powerball jackpot was sold in Arizona, officials said.

Just a single ticket claimed the grand prize — which has a cash value of $271.9 million — after matching all six numbers in Wednesday night’s drawing. The winning white ball numbers were 11, 36, 61, 62 and 68, and the Powerball number was 4.

Lottery officials said that due to strong ticket sales, the jackpot climbed past the estimate of $454 million that was announced after Monday night’s drawing had no winner.

“This is the biggest ever jackpot won on a single ticket in our state and it is a life-changing moment for this winner,” Arizona Lottery Executive Director Gregg Edgar said in a statement. “It also means millions of dollars to our state’s economy, to this winner’s community, and to the vital programs and services funded by Arizona Lottery ticket sales.”

The winning ticket was sold at a QuikTrip in Gilbert, according to the Arizona Lottery. No one has come forward yet to claim the prize, according to Arizona Lottery spokesperson John Turner Gilliland, who noted that people usually take a few days “to get their affairs in order first.” The winner, who can elect to remain anonymous, has 180 days to come forward.

The winner can either accept an estimated annuity of $473.1 million — which is paid in 30 graduated payments over 29 years — or a lump sum payment of $283.3 million. Both values are before federal and state taxes.

Beyond the jackpot, more than 1.4 million tickets won cash prizes in Wednesday night’s drawing, including a $1 million winner in Indiana who matched all five white balls, Powerball officials said.

This marks the third time this year the Powerball jackpot has been won. In January, two tickets sold in California and Wisconsin split a grand prize of $632.6 million — the seventh-largest jackpot ever. In February, a ticket sold in Connecticut won a $185.3 million jackpot.

The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to Powerball officials. The overall odds of winning a prize in the game are 1 in 24.9.

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