Advocates called for transparency from Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center on Thursday after reports surfaced of another inmate death in the troubled facility, with questions still lingering about another.

Kenneth Houck, 44, died May 19, and charges against him related to child pornography were dismissed days later by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. Late Wednesday, more than three weeks after Houck died, the New York Daily News was the first to report on his death.

The cause of Houck's death was listed in court documents as unknown, and the Board of Prisons did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The Daily News reported that one of Houck's family members said he was tested for COVID-19 at a local hospital and did not have the virus. The BOP did not respond to a question about whether Houck was tested.

Jamel Floyd, 35, died at a local hospital after he was pepper sprayed in his cell June 3. BOP officials said Floyd had barricaded himself inside and became "disruptive and potentially harmful to himself and others." Floyd's family members later said that Floyd had asthma, making him vulnerable to pepper spray.

Floyd's death sparked protests and calls for investigation from elected officials including U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, who described the case as "horrifying."

The Federal Defenders of New York called for Floyd's body to be tested for COVID-19, though a statement from the Bureau of Prisons said there was "no indication" his death was related to the virus.

The BOP did not respond to a question Thursday about whether Floyd had been tested, and Federal Defenders Executive Director David Patton said he had not heard any response to the call for testing.

Patton said the MDC's lack of transparency has been disappointing, noting that even inmates' family members are left wondering about basic questions. Conditions at the MDC are also the subject of multiple ongoing lawsuits in the Eastern District of New York, and it remained to be seen Thursday whether the deaths would become an issue in those cases.

"Frankly, if I were a judge, I'd want to know and I'd make sure I did know," Patton said.

A status conference was already scheduled for Friday morning in a suit filed by the Federal Defenders in February 2019, when a fire at the MDC led to a near-total shutdown in visits and what the Federal Defenders described as a "humanitarian crisis."

Proceedings and ongoing mediation in that suit have most recently focused on inmates' access to legal calls and videoconferences, after physical visits were shut down in March for public health reasons.

In a separate case, attorneys representing a group of inmates sued in March, arguing that the facility's response to the coronavirus pandemic was inadequate and dangerous.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner of the Eastern District of New York denied the attorneys' motion for a preliminary injunction, which could have released medically vulnerable inmates from the MDC and placed external controls on the facility's response to COVID-19.

Kovner found that MDC officials were responding aggressively to the threat of COVID-19.

In her ruling, Kovner noted that "just one MDC inmate has been hospitalized in connection with COVID-19, and none have died from the disease, even though the surrounding community has been at the epicenter of the pandemic."

An attorney representing the inmates in that case, captioned Chunn v. Edge, declined to comment Thursday.

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