Quadriplegic D.C. Inmate Jonathan Magbie's Death and a Settlement

"I was dumbfounded because I didn't understand how he [could] go from stable . . . in an emergency room to dead in three hours.

So I called the hospital and I talked to a female doctor -- and I asked her, 'Do you know anything about Magbie?' She said, 'Yeah.' I said 'Why [did] he die?' I was frankly very angry.

And she gave me a very flip answer, which I will never forget.

She told me[,] 'Because he stopped breathing.' For five seconds I could not process that answer, because that situation did not need an answer like that.

So I asked her is she trying to be funny. She hemmed and hawed, then she started backtracking and said, 'Oh, I just took over. I wasn't treating him, but he has died.' And that was the conversation."

-- From the deposition of

Dr. Malek Malekghasemi, former

associate medical director at the D.C.

Correctional Treatment Facility,