Another Day, Another Death in our Prisons..

Panel Mulls Neglected Prisoner’s Death

By MICHAEL GRACZYK – 11 hours ago

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Prison medical staff shortages led to conditions that allowed an inmate with a broken back to lay in his own filth for two days before dying in a hospital, a state lawmaker said in a hearing into the death on Thursday.
Larry Louis Cox, 48, died Feb. 6, 2007, after being transferred from the high-security section at the Estelle Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to a prison hospital in Galveston, where doctors found he had three broken vertebrae and a spinal fracture.
Prison officials believe Cox suffered the injuries two weeks before his death during a scuffle with guards in which Cox hit his head on a bunk and storage locker.
Prison officials said Cox was given a CT scan at a Huntsville hospital, but it revealed only a broken nose. They think his spinal injuries may have been overlooked, and that Cox may have aggravated those injuries during the next two days.
Before he was hospitalized, Cox told guards he was having trouble moving. He was given Tylenol because the prison clinic was closed for the night.
The following morning, he was given two prescription drugs and returned to his cell. He was unable to take more medication because of his mobility problems, and a patient care assistant recorded that as a refusal to take medication.
A guard worried about Cox’s condition violated policy and contacted his stepmother, a nurse at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, which handles prisoner health care. She arranged for a nurse from another prison to examine Cox. That nurse found Cox badly injured, lying on the floor in his own excrement, and had him transferred to Galveston.
The Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Cox’s death a homicide caused by medical neglect after he suffered blunt force trauma.
No one has been prosecuted in the case and officials still disagree over who to blame.
State Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said at a hearing about the case on Thursday that a shortage of medical staff was largely to blame.
“The Legislature passes the budget and makes policy. I think the shortage of personnel played a critical role,” Whitmire said.
John Moriarty, the prison system’s inspector general, said guards were not to blame, but that prison medical staff could have done better.
“It’s my firm belief we got to the bottom of what happened,” he said, pointing at a lack of proper medical response within the prison.
Moriarty said investigators came to the “collective conclusion … we had criminally negligent homicide. That’s why we moved forward.”
“The individual had deteriorated so bad,” he said. “Somebody should have done something.”
But Capt. Antonio Leal, a Texas Ranger assigned to examine the case after Whitmire demanded an investigation, disagreed with Moriarty’s assessment.
“Looking for somebody to indict in this deal, it’s not here, Senator,” Leal said. “There is no one criminally responsible for this man’s death.
“This is just one of those circumstances where everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong… Inmates every day play the system, but no one deserved to die like this.”
Ben Raimer, the head of correctional managed health care at UTMB defended prison medical staff. He said there was a 50 percent shortage of physicians working in the prison system, an 18 percent shortage of medical practitioners and an 18 percent vacancy rate for nurses.
He said the Cox case had been “reviewed and reviewed and reviewed” and that disciplinary action had been taken against some of those involved “but we’re not sure they did anything wrong.”
Cox was sentenced in 1990 to 20 years in prison for burglary with intent to commit sexual assault. He sentenced to another 15 years for murder in 1998 for killing his cellmate at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont.

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