The Man in the Cage

Thus, nearly a decade has passed, and the lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons have intensified, drowning the federal court system in avoidable litigation, as the Bureau of Prisons continues to implement its own corrupt brand of justice by simply failing to follow President Trump’s groundbreaking First Step Act.

In this current, horrific tale, despite what Philip Kenner has medically, endured, and miraculously sustained life during his fight to see the end of this legislative quagmire, the BOP’s failure to implement unambiguous law may cost him his oversize, This is the type of bureaucratic oversight, which is destroying America from within; regardless of the petitioner and how they got to the federal courts seeking relief.

This is not a pardon story. It is a survival story.

Long before the names Diamante, Freeh, Clemens, Jowdy, McNamee, McCready, ex-NYPD cops, or the questions surrounding NHL money trails enter the picture, there is a more immediate issue sitting inside a proverbial federal prison cell: a man with cancer who believes time is no longer measured in months or years, but in missed appointments, delayed diagnostics, and interrupted treatment.

None of this complies with Federal law or even basic humanity.

Philip Kenner’s clock began ticking long ago with a cancer diagnosis that transformed every medical decision into a race against progression. For any cancer patient, treatment is measured by precision and timing. Delays can carry consequences that cannot be undone.

Then came the return to custody; without the BOP following its own remand protocols, allowing Kenner access to the BOP’s administrative remedy appellate process.

According to Kenner, that return marked the beginning of a medical maze. He alleges that diagnostic evaluations were delayed without priority, specialist access became more difficult, and treatment schedules that should have moved with urgency became tangled in bureaucracy. Every postponed test, every rescheduled consultation, and every interruption in treatment became, in his view, another turn of the cancer clock—effectively reducing Kenner’s quality of life and remedy options for treatment.

Federal officials would likely present a different picture. Their position would be that the Bureau of Prisons is providing constitutionally adequate medical care and that inmates receive treatment consistent with established procedures and available resources.  Under the BOP’s flawed premise, if somebody had a broken finger, cutting one’s arm off at the shoulder would resolve the finger problem. From their skewed perspective, they would not be wrong—courts have too often agreed with this surreal perspective.

Between those competing narratives sits the central question.

What happens when a patient’s survival depends on speed, but every medical decision must pass through the machinery of incarceration?  Nothing, except “kick the can down the road” and systematic avoidance has occurred over the last 6 to 7 years in Kenner’s medical battle to stay alive.

For Kenner, the answer is deeply personal. He argues that imprisonment has become more than confinement. He believes it has become control over access to the very care that may determine whether he lives long enough to tell the rest of his story.

The government sees custody as a lawful sentence being carried out with appropriate medical oversight.

Kenner sees something else. He sees a countdown.

The dispute is no longer simply about prison conditions or criminal justice policy. It is about whether a cancer patient can realistically pursue life-saving treatment while confined within a system designed primarily for security rather than medicine.

That question hangs over every chapter that follows.

Before the investigations, before the allegations, before the money trails and institutional names, there is a man sitting in a proverbial dungeon, watching the medical calendar move forward lacking urgency, and resolve.

And according to his most recent Eastern District of New York filings, complementing the Southern District of Florida and District of Colorado cases. Kenner’s multiple court filings identify that cancer is moving faster than the bureaucracy – – stymying 21st-century options and congressionally granted liberty rights.