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When Asthma in Jail Becomes a Death Sentence:
Growing up, Matt Santana and Savion Hall were inseparable. The two met in middle school while hanging out with mutual friends in Midland, a West Texas oil town. After realizing they lived on the same block, Hall, a year younger than Santana, started sleeping over so they could play video games late into the night. As they got older, Hall and Santana remained dear friends, often turning to each other for help. Santana, who suffers from anxiety, says Hall sometimes spent hours by his side helping calm him down. "He would stay with me until I felt better, whether it was just driving around, listening to music or talking," he says. When Hall had asthma attacks, Santana would make sure he got his breathing treatments, which included inhalers and nebulizers, sometimes taking him to the hospital three or four times a month. The two looked out for each other. "It was special having a friend like that since childhood," Santana says. "I was hoping we would grow old together."
Then Hall was arrested and taken to the Midland County jail last summer. Court records show that he was accused of failing to wear a GPS monitor and testing positive for amphetamines—violations of the probation agreement he'd signed with the local district attorney's office to resolve a drug possession charge earlier that year. Nearly three weeks after Hall entered lockup for the alleged probation violations, jail doctors shipped him to a local hospital due to breathing problems and low oxygen levels, according to a report filed with the Texas Attorney General's office.
Friends say Hall's asthma attacks were frequent and severe enough that they learned to recognize the wheezing and heaving as signs that he needed immediate treatment. But by the time Hall arrived at the hospital from the jail, his condition had deteriorated to the point that medical staff had to resuscitate him. Santana, who saw Hall in the hospital, says his friend showed little brain activity and suffered back-to-back seizures before his family decided to take him off life support eight days later, on July 19, 2019. He was 30 years old. (Hall's family declined to comment for this story.)
Seemingly preventable in-custody deaths like Hall's are common. But while allegations of medical neglect proliferate in lockupsacrossTexas and the rest of the country, rarely do they result in criminal charges. Hall's case is different. Following a Texas Rangers probe, a Midland County grand jury this summer indicted six jail nurses on charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and knowingly falsifying records for Hall's breathing treatments.
Midland County initially reported that Hall died from "natural causes," the most common cause of death reported by jails in Texas. Nearly 800 in-custody deaths since 2005—slightly more than half of all jail deaths recorded in the state during that time—were attributed to natural causes, according to data compiled by the Texas Justice Initiative. But in recent years, lawsuits, Texas Rangers reports, and newspaper investigations have shown many of those to be preventable tragedies that appear to result from negligence on the part of jail staff. Still, justice for families and accountability for those responsible is elusive.
Local jails in Texas, which mostly hold pretrial detainees who haven't been convicted, have been required to report all deaths in custody to the state since 2009.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday September 03 2020, @05:23PM (4 children)
If you have ketones on your breath, you're hyperglycaemic, not hypoglycaemic.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Friday September 04 2020, @12:51AM (3 children)
The ketone situation is complex. If you are not type I diabetic, ketones happen only when you're HYPOglycemic. They are part of the alternative metabolism that converts fats to ketones that the brain can use. Normally there's no problem with that, it starts well before the reserves of blood sugar become critical. At some point though, it crosses over into keto-acidosis.
Diabetes is a special case where the sugar is there but without the insulithe metabolism treats it as an inert substance and so they can have the ketones and hyperglycemia at the same time. Of course, diabetics can also end up there if they use too much insulin for their sugar intake, causing their body to rapidly deplete their blood sugar (and so become hypoglycemic). The hypoglycemic state is by far the more immediately dangerous one (though both are quite harmful).
But the point I was addressing was someone claiming that there was some way to never end up in jail by simply not breaking the law. My point is that you don't have to break the law to go to jail. If no innocent person was ever arrested, we could dispense with trials and go directly to sentencing.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 04 2020, @11:09PM (2 children)
He won't be out committing crimes to finance his habit. He won't be graduating to violent crime. Because in systems that are more reliable, people don't learn either. Repeat offenders become habitual offenders become career criminals. I've run into a few, and the world would be a better place without them.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday September 05 2020, @02:14AM (1 child)
Nor did the main thrust of my argument, but as long as we're here, your recommendation is that we issue cops Uzis so they can take out jaywalkers before they graduate to more serious crimes? How serious should the crime have to be to warrant summary execution? How do you recommend fixing it when it turns out there was no crime?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 05 2020, @04:31AM
My recommendations are laid out elsewhere in the discussion, but to save you the bother, I'll repeat them.
Drug abuse is a medical, not legal, problem. Even the Canadian Association of Police Chief wants drug use decriminalized, safe injection sites, etc. The only thing stopping this is politicians not wanting to look soft on crime.
So under such a policy none of this would have happened.
Defund the police. Take half their funds and divert it to prevention - better schools, more social workers who can help kids during their formative years More job opportunities, for everyone. It's crazy when a rookie cop with shit for training makes more money than the highest paid social worker actually helping prevent crime. Then again, the police are not there to prevent crime, just respond to it.
In the 2030s we won't need traffic cops to hand out tickets. The necessary infrastructure will have been integrated into our systems to let AI do the monitoring, send out tickets, and prepare the video evidence necessary to convict if contested. So half the police will be redundant. Why not divert the savings to better outcomes for everyone by providing the necessary support so that more people can succeed?
None of this needed to happen, but it's the inevitable outcome of the current system, that has a profit motive for keeping jails occupied, and politicians who want to look like they're tough on crime.
Unfortunately, the earlier the intervention, the more likely the success. By the time someone is an adult, it's pretty much impossible to move the needle enough to make much of a difference in the course of some people's lives. That's why early intervention is crucial. And why some people will need ongoing help. And why some, no matter what you do, it will still end up badly. That doesn't relieve us of the obligation to do what we can, but we have to also realize that some people are basically broken inside. Trump is one example. Just doesn't care about the consequences of his actions on others, same as this guy didn't even care about the consequences to himself or he would have stuck to the terms of his plea bargain.
There will always be those who have shit for brains, are lazy and irresponsible, and no amount of help will make a difference. We're dealing with people - not machines. Machines are easier to fix. People? Complicated.
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