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US DC: Column: Jonathan Magbie's Last Hours
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1583/a03.html
Newshawk: chip
Votes: 1
Pubdate: Sat, 06 Nov 2004
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A23
Copyright: 2004 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letters@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Colbert I. King
Note: from MAP: While not mentioned in this column, Jonathan Magbie was
clearly using marijuana for medical purposes, even if he did not recognize
why it made him feel better, as has been pointed out in other news clippings
which may be found at http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jonathan+Magbie
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
JONATHAN MAGBIE'S LAST HOURS
"Another inmate named Jason Foster and I were cleaning the floor around 11
or 11:30 at night when we noticed Jonathan was in his cell, and he was
sweating. He could barely talk," said Darryl Carter in a phone call from
the Youngstown, Ohio, jail where he is now assigned. Carter was describing
what he saw in a D.C. jail annex called the Correctional Treatment Facility
( CTF ) on Sept. 23 -- Jonathan Magbie's last night on Earth. Magbie is
the 27-year-old quadriplegic who was sentenced to 10 days in the D.C. jail
on Sept. 20 for simple possession of marijuana. Magbie used a ventilator
at night to sleep but was without it for five consecutive days. Magbie died
on Sept. 24 while in the city's custody.
Carter, a convicted felon, said he made sure Magbie got some water, then
went to the nurse on duty, named "Binka," and told him that Magbie needed
some help. "But Binka said, 'He's okay,' and never went to see him," Carter
said. A little later, Carter said, "Jonathan was making some noise with his
wheelchair, banging it into the door of his cell. . . . An officer named
Singly wanted to lock Jonathan's cell door, but I told her, 'Don't do that
because he can't push the button if he needs help.' " The officer locked the
door anyway, Carter said, and he didn't see her check on Magbie anymore.
Carter said he saw Magbie in the hallway the next morning. "Jonathan was
saying, 'You hear them calling me?' " Carter said. "I told him, 'Nobody's
calling you, Jonathan,' but Jonathan keep saying someone was calling him,"
Carter said. ( In a second phone conversation on Wednesday evening, Carter
described Magbie's lips on the morning of Sept. 24 as "dry and whitish" and
said he was stuttering. ) Carter said he was unable to stay around because
he was taken from the CTF for a scheduled court appearance. Friday morning,
Sept. 24, was the last time he saw Magbie alive.
At my request, the D.C. Corrections Department arranged for me to visit the
Correctional Treatment Facility on Thursday morning. Quite a reception
party was on hand.
Assembled in the administrator's office were Warden Fred Figueroa; Walter
Fulton, the CTF's program manager and public information officer; Lorella
Willis, the Corrections Department's health services administrator; Patricia
Wheeler, the Corrections Department's communications director; and Jeremy
Wiley, director of government relations for Corrections Corp. of America,
the private, for-profit company based in Nashville that operates the CTF
under a Corrections Department contract.
The CTF is no longer the drug and substance abuse treatment facility that I
visited years ago. Today it's a detention annex that houses the D.C.
jail's overflow of inmates. Currently 1,186 male and female inmates are
imprisoned in the medium-security facility on various felony and misdemeanor
charges. Some are pretrial inmates; a few are under the federal witness
protection program; others are awaiting transfer to a federal Bureau of
Prisons facility. The CTF also has an infirmary. It was into this world
that Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin sent the totally dependent Jonathan
Magbie.
I asked to see where he was housed. Led by the warden, our party of six
went to the infirmary, a 37-cell facility with three dormitories and a cell
set aside for the suicidal.
It was clear why Darryl Carter said he warned against locking the door to
Magbie's cell. Although the room was equipped with an emergency button,
there was no way an inmate in Magbie's condition -- a wheelchair user with
upper and lower body paralyzed -- could reach it. Karen Yates, the officer
on duty during the tour, agreed. She said there were written instructions
to not lock Magbie's door, and she left it open during her tour of duty.
Yates volunteered that she recalled seeing Magbie on the Friday morning
before he was taken by ambulance to Greater Southeast Community Hospital,
where he later died. Asked about Magbie's condition at the time, Yates,
with the party of six looking on, said he was fine. She remembered hearing
Magbie say, "They're calling me" and "my sister's coming to get me" and "I'm
telling you, I'm leaving here." How and why he began experiencing breathing
problems on the morning of Sept. 24 -- as reported by the Corrections
Department -- Yates could not say. In response to my question about his
behavior, Yates said she was unqualified to make medical judgments. She
nonetheless maintained that in her view, Magbie was "fine" on the morning of
the day that he died.
But was he?
Could it be that the breathing difficulty inmate Carter observed was a sign
that Magbie was suffering from hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, and maybe
hypercarbia, which is an excess of carbon dioxide? With his breathing
diminished, Magbie's mental capacity could have been negatively affected,
hence the things that Carter and officer Yates heard him say on Sept. 24.
At least that's the thought of one anesthesiologist who has been following
this case in the media.
Clearly there were visual signs of Magbie's breathing difficulty; this
coupled with the condition of his lips, which, while not blue, were
"whitish," as described by Carter, may have suggested cyanosis, or a lack of
oxygen in his blood.
Is it possible that without a ventilator to help him breathe when he was
asleep, Magbie was becoming fatigued and beginning to decompensate with
regard to his ability to take in oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide? If
so, that kind of condition, according to the medical expert, can become a
vicious cycle from which recovery is unlikely even with medical help. The
carbon dioxide builds up and the lack of oxygen leads to a mentally dulled
person who then breathes less, which leads to more carbon dioxide and less
oxygen. The heart tries to overcome things, but it eventually starts to
fail -- a vicious cycle and a downward spiral toward death.
The Corrections Department said it gave Magbie nasal oxygen as prescribed by
physicians at Greater Southeast Community Hospital, where he was sent on the
night of Sept. 20 when he began to have breathing d
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