By Colbert I. King
Saturday, December 6, 2008
"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,
June 15, 2006
The flippancy of the emergency room physician quoted above captures the indifference and the grossly indecent treatment endured by Jonathan Magbie, 27, during his last days. Magbie, who had been a quadriplegic since being hit by a drunk driver at age 4, died on Sept. 24, 2004, four days after a D.C. Superior Court judge sent him to jail for possession of marijuana.
That 10-day sentence, which Judge Judith E. Retchin imposed on a first-time offender, turned out to be a death sentence. Magbie died at the hands of a jail unprepared to house a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic and a hospital too incompetent to treat one.
This is the 14th column I have written about Jonathan Magbie. The first appeared on Oct. 9, 2004. I am grateful that my editors have allowed me to keep pounding this issue.
The Magbie columns and others I have written about the death of New York Times journalist David E. Rosenbaum, the murder of 16-year-old Tia Mitchell, the suspicious death of D.C. resident Dawn Rothwell and the goings-on in the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services have a common feature: They tell the stories of city officials who have concealed facts, put on false appearances and dissembled.
Reporting and a lawsuit filed against the city by Magbie's mother, Mary Scott (ably pursued by attorneys Edward J. Conner, Donald M. Temple and American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Elizabeth Alexander), pried open files and tight lips.
We now know that:
· Retchin understood the implications when she decided to incarcerate someone who used a wheelchair and needed a ventilator to breathe while sleeping. Months before his sentencing, Retchin called Magbie to a status hearing. He attended in a motorized wheelchair that he operated with his mouth.
"Mr. Magbie," asked Retchin, "are you able to raise your right hand to take an oath?"
"No," he said.
Retchin was reminded three times by the prosecutor that Magbie was a quadriplegic and that the prosecution didn't want to try him or send him to jail.
· Malek Malekghasemi, associate medical director at the city's Correctional Treatment Facility when Magbie entered the D.C. jail, called Retchin's office and asked that she order that Magbie be sent to a hospital because the jail's medical facilities could not meet his needs.
"Minutes later [Retchin's clerk] called me and said [the] judge will not issue such an order," Malekghasemi said.
He next called the Corrections Department's counsel and spoke with an assistant. "I asked if they could possibly help me to convince the judge that I need to move this gentleman out of CTF to Greater Southeast Hospital. . . . I did not get a call back," he said.
· Magbie, in respiratory distress during his first night in jail, was taken to the emergency room of Greater Southeast Community Hospital (now United Medical Center). The doctor who treated Magbie disclosed in a deposition that he attended Howard University's medical school for five years instead of the usual three because he had "had some problems with a few courses."
When he attended to Magbie, the doctor had not gone through an internship or residency in emergency medicine. He also had failed three boards in internal medicine.
Despite knowing that Magbie wore a diaphragm pacemaker and needed a ventilator to breathe at night, the doctor sent him back to the D.C. jail, which could not provide a night ventilator.
· When Magbie's mother arrived at the jail on Sept. 24, 2004, with the ventilator that he used at home, she spoke with Malekghasemi. He did not tell her that her son had been rushed back to the hospital, where he would die hours later. "We're not allowed to share medical information," Malekghasemi said in his deposition.
· Magbie's last night at the D.C. jail could be likened to a night in Guantanamo: He was confined in a room with no means to communicate. Conditions worsened when he was returned to the hospital. Carbon dioxide was building up in his bloodstream because, without a ventilator, he wasn't breathing deeply enough.
Magbie, fatigued from fighting to stay alive, drew smaller and smaller breaths and his heart finally gave out.
The lawsuit has been settled out of court. Health care at the jail has been reformed. The judge still reigns supreme.
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