Covid-19 brings some compassion to the criminal justice system.

Compassionate release reforms are changing and possibly saving lives in the midst of a pandemic.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Ernest Boykin III, a man currently serving a 15 year prison sentence, got a call mid-summer that would drastically change his life.

Boykin hung up the phone shocked, and immediately called his father to tell him the news.

"I called my father to say, dude, I'm coming home."

His father asked ,"When?"

Neither of them knew it would be the next day.

"I got a call at 5:30pm the night before I got out. Come 10am they told me to get my stuff." Boykin said.

Boykin spent the last six years in Rivers Correctional Institution for a drug charge. He was a non-violent offender with no incidents on his record, a pre-existing health condition, and a large support system. That just happened to be the right criteria for a compassionate release.

"My family has been working with F.A.M.M., a non-profit trying to get men like me, that they believe are being over sentenced out, but my girl friend was the one who filled out the form to get me a compassionate release in February." Boykin said, "If it wasn't for Judge Emmet Sullivan showing me mercy and letting me go, I don't know where I would be, I know a couple people who got through the process to the court, but the judge didn't let them out."

(Judge Emmet Sullivan was the same judge involved in the recently controversial Michael Flynn case. )

Boykin said that the facility tried to hide their Covid-19 cases originally. At first they did not let the prisoners know what was going on. Boykin said prisoners asked why officers stopped working there abruptly or why they could no longer freely mix among units.

"It was so backwards because they would let us play in the yard and then tell us to be on lock down all- night. Then they would let us get our medicine together, get our recreational time in and call themselves putting us in isolation again for days." Boykin said.

Rivers Correction facility has not reported any Covid-19 cases or deaths, but the bureau of prisons has been keeping track of the cases. So far there have been 35- thousand inmates tested nationwide with over 10-thousand testing positive. Rivers Correction held a little over a thousand prisoners when Boykin was released.

The Compassionate Release Act was originally introduced into law back in 1984. It gave sick, old, and inmates that had families with extreme hardships reasons to get out of prison early. It was then amended in 2008 and again under President Trump in 2018, with The First Step Act.

"Under the Cares Act that gave all those people money, it stated something about inmates filing for release under extraordinary and compelling circumstances." Boykin's father, Ernest Boykin II, said. "Whats more extraordinary than the coronavirus?"

Boykin got time served doing 6 out of a 15 year sentence. He now has to stay on house arrest for a year where he can be monitored and do daily check-ins.

Boykin acknowledged that he knows some people are scared of prisoners being released early but said non-violent drug offenders like him got out to a market that now sells marijuana legally and understand that drug markets where initially criminalized to get people like him into the prison system. He also swore it would not take seven more years for him to learn his lesson.

When Boykin was picked up from Union Station, after being released the first thing he did was get some hot wings.

Right after that his parents, took him to see his kids, and continuously caught him just staring in the mirror.

He stared in the mirror constantly for two more days before deciding he needed a haircut.

His friend since grade school came over, as his first house guest a week later to give him his first hair cut as a free man That is when Boykin said he finally felt free.

When you ask Boykin, what set his case apart, he constantly advocates that he is inly where he is now because of family.

"If you had family support like I did, and somebody on the outside that was constantly talking to F.A.M.M., constantly talking to the public defenders office, constantly advocating on my behalf.... Then you had a chance." Boykin said, " Many people in there don't have that."