Justices To Decide How State Should Treat Ill Inmates

HARTFORD (AP) –– State officials and human rights advocates are clashing in a public policy debate on how Connecticut should treat its mentally ill prison inmates.

At issue is whether prisoners with mental illness at facilities such as Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown should have the liberties afforded by the state’s 1971 Patients Bill of Rights, the Journal Inquirer of Manchester reported.

The bill of rights says patients in psychiatric facilities have a number of protections under the law, including the right to humane treatment, privacy, telephone calls, and letter writing without restrictions.

Prison officials say inmates should not be covered by those rights, and many of those rights could not possibly apply to prisoners. They also argue that prisons do not meet the definition of “facilities” spelled out in state law.

The state Supreme Court will hear arguments on the issue in the fall in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of a paranoid schizophrenic prison inmate.

Bryant Wiseman, 28, of Hartford, was serving a ten-year sentence on an attempted arson conviction when he died after being restrained by more than eight correction officers November 17, 1999, at Garner.

Officers restrained him after he got into a fight with another inmate, according to the lawsuit filed by his estate last November.

“The officers and staff piled on top of Bryant, handcuffed him behind his back, put him in leg irons, savagely beat him, asphyxiated him, caused him to vomit, rendered him unconscious and comatose, and ultimately killed him,’’ the lawsuit says.

A video camera caught much of the attempt to restrain Mr Wiseman, though Mr Wiseman is mainly obscured from view by the guards crowding into the room. The footage also shows the failed efforts of medical workers as they perform CPR on the unconscious Mr Wiseman.

“It was cruelty, pure cruelty,’’ Mr Wiseman’s mother, Elaine Wiseman, told the Journal Inquirer. “And if we don’t stop it, it’s going to happen to many, many more inmates in prison.’’

She said her son’s death was similar to a murder.

“Why beat him like that? I’m sure they were trained to restrain another human being,’’ she says of the correction officers and counselor seen on the videotape.

The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, the Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities, and representatives of the state’s psychiatric community all want permission to write court briefs supporting the Wiseman family and challenging the state’s position.

Many of them worry that a large portion of the state’s psychiatric patients, who have increasingly ended up in prisons after the state’s psychiatric hospitals were shut down years ago, stand to lose some of their most basic protections if the court rules for the state.

“There’s a lot of interest in it,’’ said Janet VanTassel, the executive director of the Connecticut Legal Rights project. “It’s just going to feed into all of those issues that have been percolating at the legislature for the last couple of years.’’

Between 12 percent and 15 percent of the state’s prison population, about 2,300 to 2,800 inmates, suffer significant mental health problems, the newspaper reported.

Mr Wiseman needed regular antipsychotic medication to prevent him from becoming paranoid, aggressive, disruptive, and often violent, the lawsuit says. He often refused to take his medicine, and two days before his death a prison doctor ordered his medication cut off when he would not take the required dosage on several occasions over a two-week span, the lawsuit continues.

The lawsuit refers to cutting off Mr Wiseman’s medication as a “grave and unforgivable breach of the standard of care’’ that ultimately led to the episode that ended with his death.

Mr Wiseman’s family sued former Correction Department Commissioner John Armstrong along with several correction officers and medical staffers on duty at Garner and the University of Connecticut Health Center, which provides medical care to prisoners.

Among other claims, the lawsuit alleges that the defendants did not provide Mr Wiseman humane and dignified treatment, did not monitor him in accordance to a specialized treatment plan, and did not ensure he received proper psychiatric examination –– all of which are required by the Patients Bill of Rights.

The Correction Department made a motion to dismiss the counts pertaining to the bill, saying those laws do not apply to prisons. But a Hartford Superior Court trial judge shot down the request down in February.

Even though the wrongful death claim remains in the lower court, the Correction Department has appealed the rights issue to the state’s highest court.

“It is clear that the Patients’ Rights act cannot apply to inmates confined in our several correctional institutions, and does not confer obligations on those institutions, which are not ‘facilities’ for purposes of the act,’’ Assistant Attorney General Ann E. Lynch wrote in the her court brief.

Ms Lynch argues the legislature never intended the bill to apply to prisons, never discussing its application or trying to change the law even after the attorney general issued a 1997 opinion that the Correction Department should be exempt.

Lawyer Antonio Ponvert III, who represents Mr Wiseman’s family, called the attorney general’s opinion irrelevant, saying the Correction Department itself chose to reject it by continuing to refer to the bill of rights in its own administrative directives regarding how to treat mentally ill prisoners.

Correction Commissioner Theresa Lantz would not comment on the Wiseman case, but she addressed the topic of treating mentally ill inmates.

She said she is working on consolidating psychiatric treatment services at Garner ––which she already identified as the system’s “primary psychiatric care facility” –– to try and tackle those questions.