Maricopa County on Tuesday approved paying $3.25 million to settle a lawsuit over the 2005 death of a diabetic inmate.
County supervisors, by a 3-1 vote, approved the on-again, off-again settlement involving Deborah Braillard.
The
settlement was scheduled to be approved in mid-October, but the vote
was postponed after an anti-Sheriff Joe Arpaio protest disrupted a
meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors as the settlement
was being considered. At a subsequent meeting, the supervisors
deadlocked 2-2, killing the deal and setting the stage for the case to
go back to trial.
The county already had spent $2.2 million defending the case.
The
lawsuit was filed in 2006 by Braillard’s family after the 46-year-old
woman died of complications of diabetes after being booked into the
Fourth Avenue Jail on Jan.1, 2005. The lawsuit targets Maricopa County,
the Sheriff’s Office and Correctional Health Services, a taxpayer-funded
agency that treats county-jail inmates.
Jail
health-care workers had noted Braillard’s condition in prior bookings
but failed to do so when she was booked on suspicion of drug possession.
When she became incoherent while in custody, employees attributed her
symptoms to drug withdrawal. The symptoms were, in fact, caused by her
diabetes, which went untreated.
In
September, a Pinal County Superior Court judge issued a pretrial ruling
saying there was sufficient evidence in the case to allow Braillard’s
family to be awarded punitive damages if they prevail in the lawsuit,
potentially exposing Maricopa County to more legal liability.
But
after plaintiffs’ testimonies were completed, and while defense
testimonies were under way, the two sides reached the $3.25 million
settlement agreement."
------------
And this was what the court had to say about the MCSO jail that killed this poor woman. Not enough has really changed since then, unfortunately...
Phoenix New Times
October 17, 2008
By John Dickerson
In his
ruling Thursday against Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
U.S. District Judge Neil Wake cited a litany of unconstitutional
problems in county jails: inadequate medical care, poor food, chronic
overcrowding, and indifference to inmate health concerns.
Jail medical personnel's prescribing of a Soviet-era drug that causes
tremors, spasms and "potentially permanent and disfiguring involuntary
movements around the face" was another jail deficiency mentioned in
Wake's 83-page
"conclusion of law."
The judge's decision in the landmark Graves v. Arpaio case (formerly
Hart v. Arpaio and Hart v. Hill) came after he reviewed three weeks of
court testimony and thousands of pages of records. Many of the same
complaints the judge listed were outlined last December in
New Times'
story “Inhumanity Has a Price.”
Sadly, the long list of violations in the ruling involved hundreds of
inmates who endured cruel and unusual conditions under Joe Arpaio's
watch. Some
died as a result.
Wake noted that the "Eighth Amendment provides inmates with a right
to safe conditions of confinement, including an adequate level of
personal security.”
Specifically, failure to ensure this constitutional right led to
inmate Robert Cotton's beating death, and
to inmate Jeremy Flanders' near death following a jail assault.
Another problem spotlighted by Wake was that Arpaio’s jails do “not
consistently ensure that all pretrial detainees actually receive all
prescribed medications as ordered.” Another was that the jails'
"inadequate medical records may create a risk of unnecessary pain and
suffering."
These particular deficiencies cost
Deborah Braillard her life when she was denied insulin for her diabetes.
Asked for a comment about the ruling, sheriff's spokesman Paul Chagolla responded, not surprisingly, with an accusation against
New Times: "Yellow Journalist: You must be gleaning information from reputable reporters." We're not sure what that means, since
New Times was the first to report on
Wake's ruling Wednesday.
The sheriff did issue a press release about the ruling, amazingly claiming that it was a victory for him. "This judgment reinforces the excellent work being performed by the
detention staff, and we all are always committed to improving the jail
system wherever possible,” Arpaio was quoted as saying.
The judge's order should change a number of things in Arpaio's jails.
Among them: green baloney, filthy living conditions, and broken
plumbing. The order specifically requires Arpaio to address severe
overcrowding at the Fourth Avenue Jail, where as many as 35 inmates can
be crammed into one cell -- without beds -- for as long as 72 hours.
Subjecting certain detainees to extreme temperatures will no longer
be allowed under the order, which should mean that Tent City cannot be
as widely used as it is now.
For a look at Wake's entire 83-page order,
click here. Highlights from his voluminous list of unconstitutional jail problems are listed below:
Medical Care
* "Prison officials show deliberate indifference to serious medical
needs if prisoners are unable to make their medical problems known to
the medical staff. Access to the medical staff has no meaning if the
medical staff is not competent to deal with the prisoners’ problems. The
medical staff must be competent to examine prisoners and diagnose
illnesses. It must be able to treat medical problems or refer prisoners
to others who can.”
* “The Eighth Amendment prohibits deliberate indifference not only to
an inmate’s current health problems, but also to conditions of
confinement that are very likely to cause future serious illness and
needless suffering...Budgetary constraints do not justify delay in
treatment for a serious medical need.”
* “Pretrial detainees frequently are denied access to adequate
medical, mental health, and dental care because they do not receive a
timely in-person assessment of the urgency of their need for treatment.”
*
"Inadequate medical records may create a risk of unnecessary pain and suffering in violation of the Eighth Amendment."
* “Thorazine is an antipsychotic medication with potentially severe
and permanent side effects, including extremely painful involuntary
muscle spasms of the neck, tongue, eyes or other muscles, a profound
restlessness and constant movement of the feet and legs, drug-induced
Parkinsonism (a resting tremor with some muscle rigidity), and tardive
diskenesia (potentially permanent and disfiguring involuntary movements
around the face). Although Correctional Health Services witnesses
testified they would not prescribe thorazine as a first line of
treatment, in fact, Correctional Health Services has prescribed
thorazine for many psychotic, and even some not psychotic, pretrial
detainees without justification for its use. Correctional Health
Services psychiatrists sometimes prescribe thorazine as a sleep aid.”
* “Clinicians at the Maricopa County Jails often cannot provide a
professional medical judgment because Correctional Health Services does
not have a medical record and information system capable of timely
providing health care professionals with the information they need to
diagnose and treat pretrial detainees appropriately, including
laboratory results and results of specialty consults.”
* “Correctional Health Services does not maintain a list of pretrial
detainees with chronic diseases and cannot readily determine where they
are housed and what medications have been prescribed for them.”
* "Systemic deficiencies in the screening process significantly
impair continuity of care and result in failure to identify pretrial
detainees with immediate medical needs."
Overcrowding
* At times, the court holding cells [at the Madison Street Jail] are
so overcrowded that pretrial detainees do not have room to sit or
adequate access to toilet and sink facilities. Overcrowding in the court
holding cells causes sanitation problems and health risks to pretrial
detainees. Overcrowding in the court holding cells at Madison violates
pretrial detainees’ constitutional rights.
* “Often, substantially more than thirty-five pretrial detainees are
held in one cell [in the Fourth Avenue Jail holding area]. At times,
intake holding cells are so overcrowded that there is not room for all
inmates to sit on benches, and at times there is not room for all
inmates to sit anywhere, even on the floor. At times, inmates sleep on
the concrete floor, and sometimes there is not enough room for inmates
to sleep on the floor without coming into physical contact with other
inmates. At times, the intake holding cells are too crowded for inmates
to move to use the toilet and sink. Overcrowding in the 4th Avenue
Intake holding cells violates pretrial detainees’ constitutional
rights.”
* “From June 1, 2007, through May 31, 2008, 93,065 pretrial detainees
were booked into [Fourth] Avenue Intake. Of these, 21,987 (24%) were
in intake more than twenty-four hours, 1,910 were in intake more than
forty-eight hours, and 358 inmates were in intake more than seventy-two
hours."
* “Regardless of the length of time a pretrial detainee remains in
the intake process, Defendant Arpaio does not provide the pretrial
detainee with a bed and blanket unless the pretrial detainee is placed
in an isolation cell. As previously found, intake holding cells often
are overcrowded, without room for all inmates to sit, sleep, or move to
use the toilet and sink. At times, the intake holding cells are
extremely dirty, and the sinks and toilets unsanitary and inoperable.
At times, the intake holding cells do not have toilet paper, and
pretrial detainees are not provided with toilet paper when they request
it. At times, the intake holding cells do not have soap for pretrial
detainees to wash their hands after using the toilet. During intake,
inmates usually have no access to a shower until they receive their jail
uniforms. Some inmates have not been permitted to take a shower in
intake before putting on their jail uniforms. When inmates are brought
into intake, usually little is known about their mental and physical
conditions, sexual orientation, and security threat levels."
* "During intake, repeat offenders charged with serious violent
crimes may be placed in holding cells with individuals charged with DUI
or criminal speeding. There are no panic buttons or intercom systems in
the intake holding cells. Pretrial detainees placed in intake holding
cells usually can communicate with a detention officer only when the
door is opened to move pretrial detainees in or out of a holding cell."
* "Although security cameras record activity within intake holding
cells, detention officers do not continuously watch the security
cameras. Security staff provide only minimal visual and audio
supervision of the intake holding cells. Detention officers do not
conduct routine security walks on a regular basis in the intake areas."
* "Detention officers do not continuously monitor the intake holding
cells. The intake incident reports do not include every incident that
occurs in the intake holding cells, even some that require pretrial
detainees to receive medical treatment. Defendant Arpaio does not
consistently take reasonable measures to guarantee the safety of the
pretrial detainees during the intake process, which constitutes a
current and ongoing violation of pretrial detainees’ constitutional
rights."
"Overcrowding [in general] can violate the Eighth Amendment if it
results in specific effects that form the basis for [a] violation, such
as by causing increased violence, diluting constitutionally required
services to the extent that they fall below the minimum [constitutional]
standards, or by reaching a level “unfit for human habitation.”
Sanitation
* “Rats and/or mice remain a chronic problem in Maricopa County
Jails, which Defendant Arpaio has made some efforts to eradicate. Cells
are not consistently cleaned and sanitized prior to occupancy by
pretrial detainees thereby causing an unconstitutional health risk…There
are, therefore, current and ongoing violations of pretrial detainees’
constitutional rights."
* “If a prison’s plumbing is in such disrepair that it deprives
inmates of basic elements of hygiene and seriously threatens their
physical and mental well-being, it constitutes cruel and unusual
punishment under the Eighth Amendment.”
.JPG)
.JPG)
