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Judge demands answers from Brooklyn federal jail officials over inmate's medical woes

John Annese, New York Daily News on

Published in News & Features

NEW YORK — A judge is demanding the medical staff at Brooklyn’s troubled Metropolitan Detention Center explain in person why they didn’t give an inmate all his medication after an emergency appendectomy, then apparently lied about it to the man’s lawyers.

Brooklyn Federal Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall called for a hearing after she grilled a Bureau of Prisons attorney during a status conference last week, repeatedly asking who at the jail “lied” that detainee Jonathan Goulbourne was given all five days of his antibiotic regimen.

“At a certain point the MDC is going to have to understand that the judges of this court are no longer going to tolerate the mismanagement of the medical care of the defendants that are in their charge,” DeArcy Hall said at the May 1 proceeding.

“And so, it appears to me that our efforts up until this point haven’t been sufficient. And so, I’m going to try another route. Here we go.”

DeArcy Hall named a clinical director, a health administrator, a Bureau of Prisons lawyer and a correction lieutenant, demanding they all appear Wednesday in court to explain what went wrong.

“This is not an anomaly. I am tired of hearing the defendants that are held at the MDC are not being provided with the necessary medical treatment,” DeArcy Hall said.

 

The move by the judge is the latest in a series of frustrating responses from Brooklyn and Manhattan federal judges over the medical care at the Sunset Park jail, and the jail staff’s seeming unwillingness to respond to legal requests and judge’s orders.

“Despite the orders of numerous judges … for MDC to provide adequate medical care to defendants in their custody, MDC has failed to do so over and over, putting our clients at great risk,” Deirdre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders told the Daily News. “Judge DeArcy Hall now has made clear that she is going to find out why these failures continue.”

Goulbourne, 45, who’s awaiting sentencing for his role in a robbery and pot dealing ring, doubled over in his cell and started vomiting on April 14. When he told the correction officer on duty, he “was essentially told to stop complaining,” according to an April 30 motion from his lawyer, Noam Biale.

He was hospitalized hours later with a burst appendix. After emergency surgery, he returned to MDC on April 18 with a three-day Percocet prescription and a five-day antibiotics regimen.

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