Three families in Huntsville, Alabama have filed separate federal civil rights lawsuits alleging that last year, personnel at the Madison County jail allowed their loved ones to die of conditions that would have been easily treatable had they gotten medical attention in time, in flagrant violation of the 14th Amendment.
The details of all three deaths make for horrifying reading. Perhaps the most grisly of them involves Deundrez Woods, a 19-year-old who was serving time for a series of petty crimes, including shoplifting DVDs from Walmart, passing counterfeit money and assault. Sometime around August 6, 2013, Woods developed an open sore on his right foot. On that date, according to a lawsuit filed by Woods’ mother, Tanyatta, corrections officers placed Woods in a medical watch cell rather than take him in for treatment. Over the next few days, gangrene set in, causing Woods to become “aggressive and disruptive” due to what Tanyatta Woods’ complaint calls a “severe and sudden change in mental functioning.”He started hallucinating, and gradually stopped communicating altogether. Even though it should have been obvious that he needed medical attention, the suit claims that corrections officers took no action to help him. Indeed, they tased him at least three times for being uncooperative.
According to the complaint, jail records show that his water supply was cut off on August 12 and that there was no record of him having anything to eat after August 14; the latter date is the last time that nurses from Advanced Correctional Healthcare, the jail’s medical provider, are recorded as entering his cell. For the next five days, according to the complaint, Woods did little more than lay naked on the floor of his cell. Reportedly, the closest thing he got to medical care was on August 17, when the odor from the gangrene became almost unbearable. The most that officers did at that time was to drag him to the shower, spray him down, and move him to a different cell. On August 19, a staffer found Woods “all but dead.” It was only then that he was taken to the hospital, but by then there was nothing that could be done. He died two days later of a blood clot in his gangrenous foot.
The suit also refers to two others filed by the families of inmates who died in the jail in 2013. On March 10, Nikki Listau was arrested for making harassing phone calls. She was suffering from delirium tremens due to alcohol withdrawal. At some point that night, she fell from her bunk. According to the suit filed on her behalf, officers found her at 9 am the next morning “naked on the floor of her cell, rambling incoherently.” However, officers reportedly did nothing for 40 minutes, and then did little more than haul her back into her bunk. Someone checked on her at around 11:19 am and found her unresponsive. She was immediately taken to the hospital, but died the next day of complications from a broken femur. An autopsy showed numerous other blunt-force injuries, including broken ribs. The suit filed on her behalf alleges that had Listau been hospitalized when she was found on the floor hours earlier, she might have survived.
Seven months later, on October 14, Tanisha Jefferson was arrested for harassment. Five days after her booking, she began complaining of severe bowel and rectal pain. After numerous requests for medical attention went unheeded, Jefferson filed a medical grievance on October 25. In another grievance filed on October 28, she claimed that she feared for her life and declared that “if something happened to her it was on jail and medical personnel.” The jail’s medical director, Arthur Williams, finally saw her on October 29, but reportedly ignored her “severe and worsening abdominal pain, lack of appetite (for days), rectal pain and vomiting,” according to the suit filed on her behalf. Rather than conduct an exam, he simply prescribed her some laxatives and sent her back to her cell. The next day, she began complaining of excruciating pain and difficulty breathing. She was sent to a nurse on October 21, but the nurse sent her back to her cell. That night, an officer found her passed out in her cell and took her to the medical department. Twenty minutes later, she passed out and was taken to the hospital, but died later that night of a bowel obstruction brought on by constipation. At the time of her death, she hadn’t had a bowel movement in almost two weeks.
Civil rights attorney Hank Sherrod is representing all three families, and alleges that Madison County sheriff Blake Dorning, jail medical director Arthur Williams, and ACH CEO Norman Johnson have a longstanding agreement to “delay or deny necessary medical care in order to avoid having to pay for medical care.” He also contends that ACH is required to indemnify Madison County and provide substantial liability insurance to cover lawsuits, effectively giving corrections staff carte blanche to ignore serious medical conditions. ACH, in turn, reportedly implements “severe cost control measures” that result in inmates suffering from treatable conditions. In the cases of Woods, Listau, and Jefferson, Sherrod contends that ACH’s practices resulted in completely preventable deaths.
Madison County has only had time to respond to the Listau family’s suit, and adamantly denies that its “alleged actions and/or inactions” caused her death. However, county attorney Jeff Rich says that all three suits will be “vigorously defended.” ACH’s only comment so far is a statement saying that it “will not try its cases in the newspaper.”
I’m reading this, and I’m left wondering how a criminal investigation hasn’t been opened into this–unless one is already underway that we don’t know about. After all, the suits allege that multiple personnel ignored conditions that should have made it apparent even to someone without medical training that these inmates needed medical attention. This is especially true in the cases of Woods and Jefferson. The smell from Woods’ cell should have been a sign in capital letters that he was gravely sick. And there is no excuse for ignoring Jefferson’s complaints that she had trouble breathing and hadn’t been to the bathroom in two weeks. Even if no crime ultimately occurred, there are certain things that are so outrageous that they simply have to be investigated.
The most benign interpretation of this affair is that on the face of it, it’s yet another case of people forgetting that you don’t lose your right to basic human dignity when you’re arrested. A lot of people need to be out of jobs for this–and possibly in prison.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC at Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
