ANOTHER UNNECESSARY DEATH IN D.C.

Too bad that 27-year-old Jonathan Magbie, at this late stage, didn't know
the right people. If he did, he might still be alive today. But Magbie had
no ties to this town's rich, famous or influential. As his life drew to a
close, everyone who wanted to could exercise veto power over him. It had
been that way ever since he was hit by a car at age 4 and left paralyzed
from the chin down.

Magbie's story was told a week ago in The Post by reporter Henri Cauvin. It
was a sad tale about a quadriplegic, unable to breathe on his own since
childhood (and mobile only with the help of a chin-operated, motorized
wheelchair), who was arrested, convicted and sent to the city's jail for 10
days for marijuana possession.

His five days in custody of the D.C. Department of Corrections --
interrupted by a one-night stay at Greater Southeast Community Hospital --
ended in death. Questions concerning the quality of care provided by the
hospital and the Corrections Department to Magbie are still unanswered.
Unless his mother, Mary Scott, and his lawyer kick up a fuss, the late
Magbie will be another closed chapter in the city's long and sickening
history of dumping on the least among us.

The last five days of Magbie's life, as pieced together this week through
e-mail exchanges and interviews conducted with court and corrections
officials, paint a picture of a kind of official treatment that would never
be accorded a senator's son or someone with friends in city hall.

Let's begin with the office of Judge Judith Retchin. On Friday, Sept. 17,
three days before Magbie appeared in court for sentencing, Retchin directed
her law clerk to check with the person in the chief judge's office who
serves as a liaison with the D.C. Corrections Department to determine
whether the department would be able to accommodate a "paralyzed,
wheelchair-bound defendant." The clerk was told that the jail could handle
such an inmate.

But did the clerk discuss Magbie's reliance on a ventilator? The court's
e-mail response: "No. The law clerk did not inquire about a ventilator. Mr.
Magbie had never used a ventilator in the courtroom during any of his court
appearances."

A serious omission indeed. Corrections Department Director Odie Washington
told me that if his department had known Magbie needed a ventilator, it
would have advised the court that on-site ventilator care was not available
in corrections facilities. Contrary to Retchin's announcement at the time
of Magbie's sentencing, the Corrections Department could not attend to his
needs.

Let's consider other matters that have turned up since The Post's story.

The article stated that what happened between Magbie's arrival at the jail
on Sept. 20 at 2 p.m. and his being taken to the hospital at 9 p.m. was not
explained.

An Oct. 7 e-mail response from the Corrections Department to my inquiry
indicated that Magbie went through medical and mental health processing
through the afternoon of Sept. 20 and was awaiting transfer from the jail
to the jail's annex, the Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF), when he
started having difficulty breathing at 9 p.m. A registered nurse on duty
asked if he used oxygen at home and Magbie stated that he did not use
oxygen at home but he needs continuous breathing ventilator treatment at
night. "This is the first time that [the Corrections Department] learns of
Mr. Magbie's need for a ventilator," the e-mail stated.

The nurse told CTF doctors, and after a second medical evaluation and
finding that Magbie needed acute medical care, they decided at 9:15 p.m. to
transport him as an emergency patient to Greater Southeast Community Hospital.

The Post story reported that a court official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said that Greater Southeast discharged Magbie back to the
Corrections Department the following day, and when a senior CTF doctor who
believed Magbie belonged in a hospital asked Greater Southeast to take him
back, the hospital refused.

"That is absolutely not true," Joan Phillips, chief executive officer of
Greater Southeast, told me on Thursday. "They did not ask us to take the
patient back."

Bill Meeks, public information officer for the Corrections Department,
concurred. No Corrections Department medical personnel asked the hospital
to re-admit Magbie, he said.

So where did that story about Greater Southeast's refusal come from? Court
spokeswoman Leah Gurowitz said she and those she spoke with didn't know.

Another query: Why did the Corrections Department retain custody of a
ventilator-dependent inmate for three nights when it knew that neither the
jail nor the CTF provided on-site ventilator care?

"That was not our decision," said corrections chief Washington when I asked
him for an explanation. "We provided the care directed to us by Greater
Southeast Community Hospital," he said, and cited his department's e-mail
to me: "Magbie was returned to the CTF from Greater Southeast with a
patient discharge form with instructions for nasal oxygen at night as
needed. No ventilator was ordered."

But does Washington's finger-pointing hold up?

According to a Superior Court e-mail reply, on Sept. 21 -- the day after
Magbie's sentencing and overnight stay in the hospital -- a CTF doctor
contacted Judge Retchin's law clerk, informed her that Magbie needed a
ventilator when he slept and inquired about procedures to transfer him to
Greater Southeast. The clerk consulted with the chief judge's liaison to
corrections and was told that the doctor should speak with the Corrections
Department's medical administrator, because the court cannot direct medical
placements.

Washington acknowledged that a CTF physician, "acting on his own,"
discussed the ventilator situation with Magbie's attorney and that the two
reached an agreement to have Magbie's mother bring her son's ventilator to
the CTF on the morning of Sept. 24. Unfortunately, by the time she arrived,
at approximately 10 a.m., her son, having difficulty breathing, had already
been taken to Greater Southeast, where he later died.

Court, corrections and hospital bureaucrats have now scurried to their bunkers.

Jonathan Magbie wasn't always so little thought of.

Twenty-two years ago this month, a chipper 5-year old Jonathan "John-John"
Magbie was invited to take part in a White House ceremony commemorating
National Respiratory Therapy Week. He had suffered the paralyzing injury a
year earlier and was breathing with the help of a mechanical device
inserted in his neck and speaking through a battery-powered device that he
operated with a flick of his tongue.

On the way to the White House, "John-John" told his doctor, Dean Sterling,
director of respiratory care services at Children's Hospital, and nurse
Nancy Rivers that he wanted to ask President Reagan something. After the
ceremony, and as Reagan was saying hello to "John-John," the doctor said:

" 'John-John,' you had something you wanted to ask the president, didn't you?"

"Yes," said the boy. "What are you going to be for Halloween?"

Startled, the president replied: "I think I'll just keep being me. That's
been tough enough recently" [Bob Levey's Washington, Oct. 29, 1982].

This Halloween, both are gone.

( For the record: I have never met Judge Retchin. I did, however -- along
with other family and friends -- write a letter of recommendation last year
to the judge in behalf of a jailed relative who was being sentenced on a
felony conviction. At sentencing, Retchin credited him with time served in
jail, ordered him into drug treatment and called for a subsequent
assignment to a halfway house. He is now on probation and employed. As
noted in an earlier column, the King family tree includes members who have
attended Penn State and the state pen. )