Brooklyn Detention Center. Photo: Bebeto Matthews/AP

As discovery begins in a federal suit involving conditions related to the treatment and spread of COVID-19 at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, lawyers representing a group of inmates will seek to send a medical inspector into the facility, they said during a telephone conference Wednesday afternoon.

The medical inspector could provide a rare window into conditions at the facility during a time when advocates describe it as more opaque than usual. Physical visits have been entirely shut down due to the coronavirus, and the Federal Defenders of New York report that family members and lawyers themselves have struggled to maintain contact with people inside the facility.

Katherine Rosenfeld of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, which is representing four MDC inmates alongside lawyers from Cardozo School of Law's Civil Rights Clinic, said the team will serve government attorneys representing MDC Warden Derek Edge with discovery demands as early as tomorrow.

They're interested in learning more about how the facility is handling the coronavirus, including how many people are suffering from symptoms, Rosenfeld said. The discovery demands will include a notice of inspection for a correctional health expert to visit the MDC, she said.

"We're not attempting to waste anybody's time at all, but there is very basic information that's solely in the hands of the BOP, and that includes what exactly is going on in the facility and whether there is the massive undertesting and underreporting that we believe is the case," Rosenfeld said.

Only a few inmates at the MDC have tested positive for the virus, according to official reports. Rosenfeld said the low number is a "sign of a problem," not a sign that the facility has mostly avoided the illness sweeping the globe.

U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner of the Eastern District of New York denied the plaintiffs' requests for a temporary restraining order and the appointment of a special master, saying it would be very unusual to appoint a special master so early in a case.

She said she didn't want to eliminate the possibility of appointing a special master later, though, and encouraged the parties to move ahead with scheduling a preliminary injunction hearing in the proposed class action suit, which is captioned Chunn v. Edge.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Cho said progress in the case is ongoing, because two of the four named plaintiffs have either been released or are about to be released, and the other two plaintiffs' requests for compassionate release are still moving forward with the judges who handled their criminal cases.

Rosenfeld emphasized that the government is opposing the release of the two remaining inmates, and the ongoing issues at the MDC affect others, too.

"We would be thrilled, of course, if all four petitioners are released over the government's objections," she said. "There's a long line of other people, unfortunately, who also have health problems, who also are there being held in unconstitutional conditions of confinement, so we don't anticipate a situation where the issues in this case are going to be made moot by the … slow trickle of opposed releases that are happening."

Rosenfeld and her colleagues objected strongly after Cho mentioned that officials had interacted directly with the two men sometime Wednesday, without defense attorneys present.

The Federal Defenders of New York have raised objections for weeks about the lack of legal calls available to federal inmates amid the pandemic. Another case addressing that issue is currently moving forward in the Eastern District of New York.

Read more:

Delays in New York Parole Violation Hearings Are Deadly, Advocates Warn in Federal Suit

No Coronavirus Tests Since Friday at New York City's Federal Lockups, Mandated Report Reveals

'Powerless': NY Federal Judge Calls for Congress to Act to Protect Inmates From COVID-19