Liam O'Grady
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Liam O'Grady is a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia who sentenced Daniel Hale, and one of the few figures in that court John Kiriakou describes without hostility.

The sentence

"When Daniel Hale was sentenced in the notorious district court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Liam O'Grady shocked everybody by giving him a sentence of 45 months in prison." In a district Kiriakou characterises by its conviction rate and its severity, the surprise ran the other way.

The recommendation that was ignored

"Judge O'Grady recommended that Daniel go to a low security prison where he could be treated for depression and addiction issues. The US Bureau of Prisons ignored that recommendation, and instead sent him to the communications management unit of the supermax prison at Marion, Illinois."

Kiriakou's assessment of the destination is unambiguous: "this is one of the two most secure and most dreaded prisons in the entire US prison system," where Hale was "incarcerated with some of the most dangerous people in the world, including terrorists and Mafia leaders."

The episode is his standing example of how little a sentencing judge controls once the sentence is passed.

The Hale sentencing

Kiriakou singles out O'Grady as the reason a plea entered without any deal did not end in disaster. Hale pleaded guilty to one count of espionage in the Eastern District of Virginia, a district Kiriakou calls "notoriously anti-whistleblower", gambling on the judge agreeing that the other counts were duplicative.

On 29 July 2021 O'Grady sentenced him to 45 months where the government had urged fourteen years, allowed him to make a statement in open court, and then dismissed all the other charges with prejudice, reducing an exposure Kiriakou puts at 75 years to 45 months. The judge also recognised Hale's PTSD and ordered him held at the prison hospital complex at Butner; that order was not followed.

See also

- Daniel Hale
- Eastern District of Virginia
- Communications management unit
- Bureau of Prisons
