MOTHER SUES OVER D.C. INMATE'S DEATH

City, Hospital Accused Of Not Giving Proper Care

The mother of a quadriplegic inmate who died after suffering breathing
problems at the D.C. jail has filed a lawsuit accusing the District
government and Greater Southeast Community Hospital of failing to give him
proper care.

Standing on the courthouse steps yesterday, nearly a year after her son
Jonathan Magbie died of acute respiratory failure, Mary Scott said she
wants justice -- and $50 million in damages -- for what her suit called the
repeated failures and "brutal insensitivity" of the city and hospital.

"My baby lost 40 pounds in four days, and they never lifted a finger. No
one should have been treated like that," Scott said. "He needed medical
attention, and they turned their backs on him."

Magbie, 27, of Mitchellville, was paralyzed from the neck down after being
hit by a drunk driver when he was 4. On Sept. 20, 2004, he sat in his
mouth-operated wheelchair as D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith E. Retchin
sentenced him to 10 days in jail for a misdemeanor charge of possession of
marijuana. He was a first-time offender.

Magbie was taken to the D.C. jail, and within hours he was having
difficulty breathing. He was moved to the emergency room at Greater
Southeast; the hospital released him to the jail the next day. On Sept. 24,
he again was taken to the hospital, where he died that day.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, asserts that Greater Southeast
should have treated Magbie for respiratory distress and other serious
problems and admitted him Sept. 21, instead of discharging him. It also
claims that medical staff members at the D.C. Department of Corrections
knew they did not have the ventilator that Magbie said he needed to breathe
at night but still put him in a locked jail infirmary room where they
couldn't hear him and ignored his rapidly deteriorating health.

Hospital officials have defended the care they provided. Yesterday, they
declined to comment on the lawsuit until it is reviewed by lawyers.

D.C. officials also would not immediately comment on the suit. Corrections
officials have said Magbie received "all the necessary treatment" while in
custody.

Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the National Capital Area chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined in filing the suit with
attorneys Donald M. Temple and Edward J. Connor, questioned yesterday why
neither the city nor the hospital has punished those negligent in Magbie's
death.

"I think if a dog was treated this way in an animal shelter, the shelter
would have been closed down by now or the director fired," Spitzer said.
"As far as I know, no one has suffered any consequences for this needless,
painful death."

Investigations were launched after Magbie's death and provided some
conclusions about its cause. But his family's legal complaint makes new
detailed allegations about what it calls the missteps and "cruel and
unusual punishment" by nearly a dozen city and hospital medical staff
members. The suit does not name Retchin as a defendant.

A D.C. Department of Health investigation concluded in December that the
hospital failed to provide adequate care.

An investigation by the Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure
cleared Retchin of blame, concluding that she acted within the law and made
an effort to determine whether the D.C. jail would be able to care for a
quadriplegic. That report noted, however, "failures of communication . . .
in this tragic sequence of events" in which the judge's staff was actually
checking whether a federal prison could take care of a paraplegic.