I am reminded why context matters in making sense of anything, but especially in making sense of Texas politics and public policy. The sad story that is the subject of this blog involves another inmate who died in a Texas jail after...
...[the] jail doctor knew of Miranda's medical needs and failed to meet them.
Crossposted at TexasKaos
Here is the rest of the brief story:
LINK
US Supreme Court Refuses Appeal Of Texas Jail Death Verdict
(January 16, 2007)-The US Supreme Court Tuesday blocked the widow of a man who died in an El Paso jail from pursuing a $5 million verdict.
Justices made no comment in declining to consider the appeal of Jessie Dorado, whose husband died in the El Paso County Jail after being denied medication to control seizures.
Mexican national Eduardo Miranda was a physician who was arrested in 1997 on a two-year-old drunk driving charge.
He died 74 hours later.
Miranda lived legally in El Paso but practiced medicine in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
His family invoked a federal civil rights law authorizing suits against state and local government officials who violate a person's constitutional rights.
A jury awarded Dorado $5 million after deciding the jail doctor knew of Miranda's medical needs and failed to meet them.
But a Texas appeals court threw out the verdict.
It said the jail doctor hadn't acted with deliberate indifference and that Miranda's lawyers presented little evidence that the jail doctor set jail policy.
That's a threshold plaintiffs often must meet in civil rights lawsuits against government officials.
El Paso County Attorney Jose R. Rodriguez says the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case was further vindication that jail officials acted appropriately.
I love that last line. It is the morally bankrupt's ultimate copout. As someone else has said , when you lock somebody up, you become not only legally responsible for their well-being but also morally responsible.
I could find nothing else on this story on the web and it is too soon for the full case file to be online at the Supreme Court so sI am left to fill in the gaps with speculation. Be that as it may, I find this old case distrubing because of what I have blogged about before [ here and here ].
Indifferent, substandard, SHODDY medical care is not the exception in Texas prisions and jails, it is the rule. [ see also here and here especially here ] It is the rule because our state lege, knowing that prisoners are not popular, have no voice, cannot fight back against such injustices cut and cut and cut on prison expenditures.
I don't care if the prisoner is Jack the Ripper, we must be better than they are, meet higher moral standards. We are the civilized ones, right. Tragedy is only an indifferent moment away otherwise.
And all those sanctimonious efforts by the lege to save the unborn? Well the Texas prison system rips away the veil on all claims about how much they respect life. They respect some lives, some of the time. Individually, they may be sincere, but collectively it is obvious that they respect the unborn mostly because they are convenient political tools. Either you respect all life or you are playing god , choosing which lives to respect and which are worthless. The lege is imminently unqualified to make these decisions.
Most prisoners are probably guilty, some few are not. We owe it to those who are not to make sure they don't die of neglect. We owe it to the guilty that they serve the time to which they are sentenced . Whatever you think of the death penalty and I think it totally and hopelessly broken, nobody should be sentenced to death by indifference, it is not just, nor wise, nor moral. The standard should NOT be some shoddy legality, but simple human decency. I think the El Paso doctor failed that standard in this case, no matter what the Supreme Court and the Texas Appeals Court said. Apparently the original jury thought so too....
I would love to hear how prision and jail health care is handled elsewhere. Better? Worse?