It was mid-March when Gov. Andrew Cuomo began to sound the alarm. 

“One of the most dense areas are the state national prison system, where you have people in close quarters, and that’s going to be a real problem and a worse problem as this develops,” Cuomo said at the time, adding, “Again, affecting the vulnerable populations.”

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Prisons are particularly susceptible to the spread of coronavirus. 

Malik Jones is serving in one of them. He is in Otisville Correctional Facility in Orange County, where, as of Tuesday, there were 45 cases of COVID-19.

Jones, who has asthma, was picked up as part of a major gang bust in Harlem in 2014. He is serving time for attempted assault and conspiracy.

We spoke with his mother. We are just using her first name.

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“They aren’t able to social distance,” Fay said. “They aren’t able to separate. They don’t have access to the cleaning supples that we are supposed to be using. He has a past medical history of asthma. People with respiratory issues are at a higher risk of obtaining the coronavirus and also dying from it. When he comes to use the phone, he puts a sock over the phone as a barrier so he’s not ingesting the same germs that someone else was on the phone with.”

Jones is one of 15 inmates in Otisville named in a lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society on Thursday, exclusively obtained by NY1.

The suit argues that these inmates should be released immediately. It claims these inmates are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of their race and pre-existing medical conditions. Of the 15, nine have served decades in prison for murder.

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“They are very sick individuals who are at high risk for serious illness and complications and even death from COVID-19,” said Tomoeh Murakmi-Tse, a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society. “And Otisville Correctional Facility and DOCCS prisons, in general, don’t have the capacity to protect them.

"Essentially, they have reactivated the death penalty by default," he continued. "These are people who committed serious crimes, but they have done everything they can to rehabilitate themselves."

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The suit claims Otisville presents a dramatic and disturbing illustration of the impossibility of protecting the most vulnerable individuals from infection in a prison setting.

The suit claims inmates are sleeping just feet apart and access to masks or bandanas is unreliable. 

Officials at the state corrections department said they are unable to because of pending litigation.

Currently, the state is considering releasing inmates if they are 55 or older, not serving for violent felonies or sex offenses, and are within 90 days of their release date. We know at least 160 inmates who have been released early from the state prison system so far -- that’s out of 41,000 inmates in the system overall.