DEATH OF A PRISONER

The facts surrounding the death last June of 49-year-old Takaka man
Stephen Peter Cleary, after only 11 days in police and Corrections
Department custody, will eventually be the subject of both an
independent prison inspectorate report and a coroner's inquest. Gerard
Hindmarsh, who lives in Golden Bay, discusses the allegations so far.

The first and only time that I met Steve Cleary was the day before his
sentencing, when I told him there was no way a family man like himself
was going to be put away, not for growing 12 cannabis plants. But I
was wrong, and he got one year in prison instead.

Eleven days in custody later, on June 11 of this year, Cleary, 49, was
dead, from what Corrections Department officials immediately began
calling "natural causes".

Three days later, the Christchurch coroner's report backed this up:
the provisional autopsy carried out by its appointed pathologist
stated that cause of death was due to a "pulmonary embolus" or blood
clot in the lung.

But that explanation seemed somewhat lacking when Cleary's body was
delivered back to the family with nose broken, face and body bruised,
his glasses broken.

Left behind baffled and understandably angry until all the facts come
out was Cleary's family, including wife Irene, two of his own children
and three step-children - two of whom live at home, including one with
special needs.

The shock that rattled through Golden Bay after the news of his death
was heightened because Cleary was not your ordinary criminal type.
Here was a man who everyone knew enjoyed going to watch his
11-year-old son play soccer on weekends, who helped out at school
camps, who took his family out sailing and made wind chimes for a
modest living.

Rural Women (Bainham branch) was just one organisation that felt
strongly enough about the issue to write to the Corrections Minister,
Damien O'Connor, asking for a full inquiry.

"A lot of people around here felt strongly about what happened," says
Golden Bay's community law worker Carolyn McLellan. "Okay, he did
something he shouldn't have, but no one expected him to die for it.
The repercussions for his family have been horrendous. We need to know
all the facts."

Those appeals have now been heard. The Howard League for Penal Reform
(Christchurch) has been granted standing to cross-examine and address
issues that will invariably arise at the coroner's inquest, and has
engaged Nigel Hampton, QC, to look at the entire case on its behalf.

Because Cleary died in custody, the independent prison inspectorate
has also investigated and will eventually release its report, one that
the Ombudsman has a mandatory role to monitor. Under its terms of
reference, though, it will only look at Corrections Department custody.

It's the Police Complaints Authority which deals with issues arising
from police custody - and that includes time spent in both police
cells and transport vans.

Cleary spent his first five days in Nelson police cells, where he was
taken immediately after sentencing around 10am on June 1. The usual
daily exercise yard was unavailable because a prisoner had smashed it
up the week before and made it unsafe to use.

(Specifically, the police told me, the vandalising prisoner had pulled
a light fitting off in an attempt to light a cigarette. It was still
awaiting repair when Cleary arrived.)

Cleary's family also maintains that his "overnight" bag of warm
clothes (that he took to court in case of incarceration) was not
delivered to his holding cell until the fourth day, despite repeated
requests as to its whereabouts.

They say the only clothes he had during that time were what he had
stood up in the dock in - a thin cotton shirt and dress trousers - at
a time when Nelson was experiencing its hardest frosts of the year.

Police deny this, but admit that no records are kept of when bags are
delivered to remand and sentenced prisoners.

"It's highly unlikely that bag wasn't delivered quickly within a day,"
says Nelson Bays police area commander Inspector Brian McGurk. "Yes,
sometimes we do have to vet larger objects, televisions even, that
prisoners want to bring in, but something like clothes in an overnight
bag is routinely passed on to a prisoner, and quite quickly too."

Irene Cleary points to the big picture during this
time.

"There's no doubt he was both physically confined, cold and severely
depressed in those first few days. The severity of his sentence was
sinking in, even if he was trying to keep up a brave front in his
communication with me. Then he went rock bottom when the station
supervisor came to tell him the police intended appealing his case, to
get him a tougher sentence."

In a telephone call to his wife on the evening of day four, Cleary
rejoiced about the arrival of his bag of warm clothes, but was now
complaining for the first time about a growing "cramp-like" feeling in
his right calf, putting it down to a suspected sprain gained one week
earlier back at home while working hard to get everything ready for
his family in case he went away. This included cutting all the hedges,
building a large woodshed and filling it with split firewood.

Cleary's doctor before his death was Struan Clark, a GP at the Golden
Bay Medical Centre. He says that the "cramp" in Cleary's leg was
almost certainly the beginning of a blood clot, or deep vein
thrombosis, which would eventually dislodge and travel up to cause the
pulmonary embolus that would kill him.

"This condition is aggravated by being kept for long periods in
confined conditions, similar to how people develop it on long-range
air travel, which is why it's sometimes referred to as 'economy-class
syndrome'."

Early on day six, Cleary and six other prisoners were transferred to
Christchurch Men's Prison, Paparoa. Because the Nelson to Christchurch
prisoner run is the longest in the country, Nelson had been chosen to
trial a "state-of-the-art" prototype van, which would keep prisoners
in segregated compartments.

In one of these compartments (each with less than one square metre of
floor area), Cleary travelled to Kaikoura, where the prisoners
underwent a "handover" into a conventional Corrections Department van.
This would have allowed him more room but, all in all, it was another
cramped day of no exercise.

Cleary did try to accept prison without complaint, his wife keen to
point out he was the sort of guy who didn't like to make a huge fuss.

Writing soon after his arrival to his 30-year-old stepson, he joked
about "his good luck, being offered a fully funded scholarship in the
'ping-pong university', which offered in-depth courses on burglary,
theft and car conversion".

To his wife, he said the growing pain in his leg had become a "bloody
nuisance" - but that he was okay and trying hard not to let it get him
down.

Establishing the exact chain of events over Queen's Birthday weekend,
immediately following Cleary's arrival at the prison, will be critical
to the prison inspectorate report. Corrections Department officials
have no record of Cleary asking for medical help of any kind, and it
is unlikely any prisoner accounts will be taken into account, because
these can be notoriously inaccurate.

However, there is a five-page handwritten and signed letter from a
prisoner claiming to be Cleary's "cell neighbour" in Kauri Wing, which
was sent to Irene after his death.

This inmate, now released, claims Cleary began begging for medical
assistance about two days before he died, but was told bluntly on each
occasion that no doctor was available until after the long weekend.

The former inmate says that at 5am on Monday, June 11, Cleary pushed
the emergency button in his cell and was heard to say to two guards
who came to investigate that he couldn't breathe properly.

Instead of calling the doctor, they gave him two Panadol tablets and
told him to go back to bed. At 2pm, Cleary still hadn't got up, so he
was ordered out to have a shower, after which he sat down at the top
of the stairs and began complaining of chronic chest pain, the inmate
says. According to the letter, a guard told him to "suck it!", which
in prison jargon means "harden up".

The writer of the letter claims he then went to Cleary's assistance,
helping him down the stairs until he suddenly collapsed by his cell
door, sustaining his facial injuries on the concrete floor in a
full-frontal fall.

When several other prisoners rushed to his aid, they were told to
"f... off" by the guards, who by now realised they had an emergency on
their hands.

Instead of attending to Cleary, the guards then "locked down" the
wing, putting all the prisoners back in their cells. For a full 20
minutes, the letter states, Cleary was left on the floor. When medical
staff finally came, they tried CPR unsuccessfully before taking him to
the prison hospital where he was pronounced dead.

In fairness to Corrections, it should be pointed out again that little
weight has been given this letter by either the Ombudsman or prison
inspectorate in their investigations. Corrections Minister Damien
O'Connor told Irene personally that it is common for prisoners to
write mischievous letters after events like this to generate trouble.

However, it's also hard not to draw some conclusion that Cleary was
not given reasonable care quickly enough, considering the pain in his
leg was evident right back in the police cells.

"Chances are that if he had been given the usual medical attention, he
would almost certainly be alive today, applying for home detention,"
says Dr Clark.

Both the police and Corrections Department officials claim that Cleary
failed to alert them to his medical history, which included two bouts
of meningitis, the first at age 12 which left him comatose and
seriously ill for months, another almost as bad when he was 16.

His body was left badly scarred and his eyesight deteriorated, later
compounded by a serious eye injury. In his later life, severe seizures
crippled him for weeks at a time.

But Cleary had already laid all his medical history out at his trial,
arguing that his excessive use of cannabis alleviated some of the pain
symptoms of his conditions. The Crown actually withdrew the indictable
charge of supplying the drug when medical history and usage evidence
was put forward.

So, was the custodial sentence dispatched by Judge Tony Zohrab even
appropriate in the first place? Police are adamant it was.

"Cleary was also caught growing cannabis just the previous year, in
the same shipping container on his property," says Senior Sergeant
Arthur Clarence of Takaka police. "It was not only the repeat
offending but the degree of sophistication in growing under lights and
hydroponic growing system that turned it into a serious offence."

Having met Cleary, and knowing why he used cannabis, it is hard to see
what a custodial sentence would have served. After his earlier offence
last year, he was sentenced to 250 hours of community service and
ended up working it off at Motupipi School.

"Everyone liked him," recalls principal Mark Cullen. "He got stuck in
and gave it his all. We got heaps of jobs done, he even helped paint
part of the school while he was here on top of what he was required to
do."

Born in Christchurch on September 23, 1957, Steve Cleary began his
working career as an apprentice carpenter and had a brief stint in a
tannery before working in Sydney and Singapore where he supervised
multi-storey residential constructions.

After returning to Christchurch, he set up Windsong chimes, eventually
becoming the biggest manufacturer of wind chimes in the country, a
business he would carry on after shifting to Golden Bay. Apart from
his cannabis convictions, he had no other criminal history.

At Cleary's funeral on June 16, the job of spokesperson for his family
fell naturally to his brother, Philip Cleary, a Sydney businessman. In
his eulogy, he blamed the justice system of this country for failing
in its responsibility to protect its citizen.

"Steve did not die well. He died alone, scared, afraid, among
strangers. Now, family members are being punished by the justice
system for the rest of their lives."

Ironically, perhaps, Corrections Minister Damien O'Connor is the first
to agree: "This is a tragic case, it just shouldn't have happened. But
if there is one good thing that has come out of it, it's that
Corrections and Health departments have seen the need to come together
to cooperate like never before."

POSTSCRIPT: The independent prison inspectorate has completed its
draft report into Cleary's death, with the final version expected to
be released early next year. The Christchurch coroner's office has yet
to schedule a date for a formal inquest.