Federal Fugitive From Woonsocket Captured: Cops

WOONSOCKET, RI — A federal fugitive from Woonsocket was captured, police said.

James Ruth was taken into custody Thursday on a federal arrest warrant for escape from custody, according to the Rhode Island State Police.

The state police gave Ruth's age as 36 but the Federal Bureau of Prison's listed the only escapee named James Ruth as 37.

Ruth was sentenced to six years and five months in federal prison in February 2020. He pleaded guilty in October 2019 to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 28 grams or more of cocaine base, conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine base and distribution of cocaine base, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Ruth was "arrested by members of the Safe Streets Task Force on July 2, 2019, following an investigation into his drug trafficking activities, including several electronically monitored sales of crack cocaine," the U.S. Attorney's Office said at the time of his sentencing.

Ruth was transferred to community confinement overseen by the Bureau of Prisons' New York Residential Reentry Management Office on Dec. 3, Donald Murphy of the Bureau of Prisons Office of Public Affairs said in an email.

Ruth escaped from community confinement May 6, Murphy said.

In January 2021, when Ruth was in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, he wrote a letter to a federal judge urging him to grant a compassionate release, claiming that it had been "nothing but chaos" since he arrived at the facility in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The inhumane conditions are harsh, cruel and unusual punishment," Ruth said in the letter, noting that he had been stabbed 12 times.

Ruth was apprehended by the Rhode Island Violent Fugitive Task Force and the Woonsocket Police Department, the state police said.

State police Maj. Kenneth M. Moriarty failed to respond to a request for further information on Ruth's arrest.