Jackie Orena alleges medical neglect and says her grandfather’s original prosecutor supports mercy. The President should commute his sentence before time runs out.
LUTHMANN NOTE: I call this institutional sadism. The court acknowledged devastating illness, yet the prison clock keeps running against a family trying to say goodbye. Jackie Orena’s claims about hunger, sepsis, and obstructed hospital communication demand answers. His convictions cannot excuse failures of care. If his original prosecutor supports release, as Jackie says, the insistence on endless punishment becomes harder to defend, and Judge Eric Komitee has defended worse. Mercy has meaning precisely when the recipient has a serious criminal record. Trump has the power to commute this sentence. He should use it while Victor Orena can still be brought home alive. A granddaughter should not have to win a race against death and Washington’s sadistic Bureau of Punishment. This piece is “Trump Bring Little Vic Home.”
By Richard Luthmann
Jackie Orena says federal authorities gave her family 72 hours to visit a dying man. The window closed. Her grandfather kept breathing. Now she is fighting for a chance to remain beside Victor “Little Vic” Orena when his breathing stops. He is 92, suffering from dementia, and, she says, dying in federal custody. In a further statement, Jackie describes lost dentures, malnutrition, sepsis, and a prison bureaucracy that ignored her calls while her grandfather deteriorated.
“We’re asking for the chance to hold his hand when he takes his last breath,” she says in her video appeal. Her grandfather may forget names, but he lights up when family enters. “His soul knows he’s surrounded by love.” Jackie believes President Donald J. Trump should watch that video and commute Orena’s remaining sentence to time served. Washington has had him for nearly 35 years. His family is asking for whatever remains.
The government already acknowledges devastating illness. Judge Eric Komitee’s April 27, 2026 order recognized Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases as extraordinary and compelling circumstances. The government disputed neither that threshold nor Orena’s worsening condition. His application described hospitalizations involving heart and lung failure. Komitee nevertheless denied release, emphasizing the crimes, victims, criminal history, and punishment. Jackie’s latest account asks what that punishment has become inside the prison.
Trump Bring Little Vic Home: Lost Dentures, Sepsis, and Silence
Jackie says her grandfather’s dentures were lost in custody. Dementia had also robbed him of the ability to remember how to chew or eat, she says. She describes malnutrition and dying tissue, and accuses the institution responsible for his care of leaving him “basically starving him to death.” These are specific accusations from a granddaughter trying to protect a man who can no longer reliably explain his needs. They demand answers about food, feeding assistance, weight loss, and treatment.
When he became septic, Jackie says, sadistic Federal Bureau of Prisons officials refused to send him to a hospital. She says a lawyer had to submit the request. For a month, she says, the prison ignored her calls. A family should never need counsel to force attention to an emergency. The cruelty extends beyond denying release. It reaches the basic obligation to recognize deterioration, obtain treatment, and keep a vulnerable patient alive.
The silence has followed him into the hospital, according to Jackie. She says prison officials continue directing the hospital not to communicate with family members, although they are his designated healthcare proxies. Officials should identify the authority for any such restriction and explain how medical decisions are being made. A prison sentence does not make a confused patient’s family disappear. Nor does a government badge answer a question about why the people entrusted with his care cannot obtain information.
His confusion has independent documentation. Katie Engelhart’s 2023 New York Times account described Orena sitting in a wheelchair at Federal Medical Center Devens. Asked why he was in prison, he could not remember. At times, she reported, he believed he was the warden. That portrait predates the latest neglect allegations. It shows why a family must be heard when a prisoner cannot reliably describe his symptoms, understand instructions, or explain what has happened to him.
The prison’s records should answer these questions: when the dentures disappeared, what feeding assistance was provided, how his weight changed, when infection was recognized, and when hospital care was sought. Jackie’s account also calls for the lawyer’s request and the communications restricting hospital contact. His criminal history supplies no answer to any of those questions. Whatever punishment officials believe remains justified, they are still responsible for food, medical attention, and an intelligible account of the care he receives.
He Was Marked for Murder
Jackie also rejects the familiar account of rival mob factions fighting for control. She accuses FBI handler Lindley DeVecchio of fueling the war and giving Gregory Scarpa addresses used to hunt her grandfather. “The other side was the FBI, not rival factions,” she says. She describes Orena as a target defending himself and asks what anyone would do if killers waited outside their home. The attempt on his life is documented in Judge Jack Weinstein’s 1997 opinion.
The opinion recounts Carmine Sessa and three others waiting outside Orena’s home on June 20, 1991, intending to kill him. Orena spotted them and escaped. A later federal opinion reproduces government disclosures identifying his hiding place among information believed passed from DeVecchio to Scarpa. That record gives Jackie’s anger substance. The reach and purpose of the suspected leaks remained disputed; Weinstein rejected the broader theory that federal misconduct manufactured the war.
Orena became the Colombo family’s acting boss while Carmine Persico was imprisoned. His convictions include the 1989 Thomas Ocera murder, predating the attempted hit, and racketeering. Those convictions stand. So does the government’s dirty record. Its own inspector general documented failed supervision and unauthorized disclosures involving Scarpa and DeVecchio. Other FBI agents challenged the relationship. The Bureau was cultivating a killer while some of its own investigators feared their supervisor had become compromised.
In separate 1995 Colombo-war prosecutions, seven defendants were acquitted, including Orena’s sons Victor Jr. and John, and Thomas Petrizzo. Contemporaneous coverage described jurors’ anger at the FBI’s relationship with Scarpa. Orena had already been convicted. Weinstein later found relevant information suppressed for disclosure purposes, but denied a new trial on materiality grounds. The family’s grievance has a concrete chronology: later juries heard damaging FBI evidence that Orena’s jury had not heard.
Trump Bring Little Vic Home: A Prosecutor Can Show Mercy
Jackie now says she received a letter from her grandfather’s original prosecutor supporting release and urging compassion. Her question cuts through the government’s repeated reliance on the severity of the crimes: if the prosecutor who helped put him away can support mercy, why does continued confinement remain indispensable? The letter, as she describes it, would put a voice from the original prosecution on the side of mercy. “It just shows cruelty,” Jackie says of the refusals.
The courts have shown mercy in other Colombo-war cases. Judge Allyne Ross released Joseph Monteleone after 30 years, when he was 83 and used a wheelchair. Judge Frederic Block reduced Anthony Russo’s life sentence to 35 years, rejecting an “unyielding punitive concept” in that case. Orena’s leadership role distinguishes his record. His profound decline also demands weight. Even the 2022 appellate decision recorded the BOP’s minimum violence-risk assessment.
David Schoen’s December 24, 2025 clemency letter told Trump that BOP records described Orena as terminally ill. Federal sentencing policy identifies advanced dementia among terminal conditions, without requiring an exact countdown to death. The machinery has ample reason to act. On the acknowledged medical decline and Jackie’s account of neglect and obstructed family access, I call the result bureaucratic sadism. It arrives through denials, unanswered calls, and visiting windows.
Jackie says even appeals to the top of the Justice Department have produced claims that nothing can be done. That answer should never become an excuse for inertia. The president has independent authority to commute a federal sentence. Trump can reduce Orena’s punishment without erasing his convictions. He can end this impasse without waiting for the people defending continued imprisonment to change their minds. Jackie’s family offers care and wants the chance to say goodbye.
Mr. President, watch the granddaughter in that video. Then consider what she says has happened since: the missing dentures, the struggle to eat, the sepsis, and the unanswered calls. Nearly 35 years cannot be returned. The chance to hold a hand can still be preserved. Sign the commutation. Let this family bring Little Vic home alive for his final days.
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