JUSTICE FOR A 'DEATH OF NEGLECT'

Next Tuesday marks the first anniversary of 27-year-old Jonathan Magbie's
final encounter with the D.C. government. It will be no cause for celebration.

It was on Sept. 20, 2004, that D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin
sentenced Magbie, a quadriplegic since an accident at age 4, to 10 days in
the D.C. jail. His crime? Possession of marijuana.

Five days after falling into the hands of the D.C. government, Magbie was
dead. He died a horrible death. It was preventable. But nobody in the
system cared.

Looking down from her bench, Retchin saw a first-time offender. He
controlled his wheelchair with a mouth-operated device. He could breathe
only with a battery-controlled pulmonary pacemaker. At night he needed the
assistance of a respirator. He could have been sentenced to home detention,
where he would have had round-the-clock attention. Instead, Retchin,
apparently upset when Magbie refused to swear off weed, which helped him
get through a miserable existence, sent him to that taxpayer-supported
hellhole near the Anacostia River known as the D.C. jail.

What happened to Magbie at the jail and at Greater Southeast Community
Hospital, where his life ended five days later, shouldn't happen to a dog.
In fact, it doesn't happen to dogs and cats in the custody of decent and
caring people. But Magbie had no one in his corner except his mother, Mary
Scott, and she could not join him in jail. In the intervening 12 months,
the continuum of players responsible for Magbie's last days on Earth has
never had it so good.

Retchin's handling of the Magbie case was reviewed by the D.C. Commission
on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure: It gave her grace, and she was
subsequently rewarded with a renewed assignment to the court's coveted
criminal docket so that more Retchin-style justice can be meted out to the
criminal-minded.

Odie Washington, director of the Corrections Department, which runs the
D.C. jail, retired with full honors and words of praise from the mayor. And
Greater Southeast Community Hospital, which treats the District's sick
inmates under a lucrative D.C. government contract, continues to collect
D.C. checks, courtesy of city taxpayers.

The only person made to pay for the mistreatment of Jonathan Magbie has
been Magbie himself. But perhaps not for long.

On the anniversary of his imprisonment, attorneys retained by Magbie's
mother will file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the D.C.
government and the hospital charging them with medical malpractice and
violations of the D.C. Human Rights Act, the Americans With Disabilities
Act and the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Magbie's lawyers are no slouches. Two of them, Donald Temple and Ed Connor,
successfully sued the Eddie Bauer clothing store chain in 1997 for falsely
imprisoning and defaming three young black men on suspicion of shoplifting.
The federal jury required the company to pay $1 million.

Temple and Connor are joined by the American Civil Liberties Union's Eighth
Amendment specialists in prisoners' rights, Elizabeth Alexander and Arthur
Spitzer. Together they have done the job that the D.C. inspector general's
office and the mayor's office told me they would do -- but did not.
Magbie's lawyer found out what happened to him during those five fateful
days a year ago. And they want to tell that story to a federal judge and jury.

Among the evidence they will present is an affidavit and medical opinion
from Jerry S. Walden, a prison medicine expert and former chief medical
officer at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. After a review of
records from the D.C. jail and Greater Southeast Community Hospital,
interviews with various sources and a look at the pertinent medical
literature, Walden concluded that "Jonathan Magbie died a death of neglect."

There were, Walden said, many parts to the failure to take Magbie's health
seriously. "Certainly the tracheostomy accident [Magbie's tracheostomy was
misaligned, shoved back in, and not tied to maintain a correct position]
could have been prevented and happened while being monitored.

"His pneumonia [noted during the initial jail examination] was essentially
undiagnosed and untreated. Despite the early X-ray and the sputum
production, no one sent a sputum specimen and started treatment. All this
was complicated by his nutritional status." (Magbie weighed 130 pounds at
jail intake on Monday, Sept. 20. Five days later, at his autopsy exam, he
weighed 90 pounds).

"He had been in the emergency room on day one [rushed from the jail to
Greater Southeast and returned the next day] and had fluid and sugar
deficits noted. No one cared that he wasn't eating or measured his fluid
intake after."

Although Magbie needed a respirator and made that fact known on his first
day at the jail, he was never given one during his five days in custody.
"There were no physicians consult nor pulmonary consult performed while in
the jail. He was monitored by license practical nurses. No RN [registered
nurse] or PA [physician's assistant] or doctor followed him or was even
consulted about" drastic changes in his condition.

Disaster struck on Sept. 24, his last day at the jail -- and in this world.
The lawsuit will detail what happened that day.

None of this will soften the blows that Magbie received from the D.C.
government. None of this will bring him back or end the weeping and sorrow
in his family. But Magbie deserves justice. This is an opportunity. We are
obliged to try.