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Death in Prison, Four Years Later

God bless the Boston Globe. Sunday’s front-page headline is about the investigation into the death of Kelly Jo Griffen, who died in the throes of heroin withdrawal while held in prison four years ago. And the Sunday magazine has a great critical look into residency restrictions for sex offenders. I’m going to focus on the prison death, as Gideon over at a public defender has already covered it wonderfully.

As I have focused on here before, the Massachusetts prison system has come under a lot of scrutiny lately, both for a high suicide rate among inmates and for keeping prisoners locked up beyond their release dates. And now there’s a renewed focus on the death of a 24-year-old mother, who died in 2003 while being held at the Framingham women’s prison for arraignment on a minor drug possession charge. The reports of her death at the time said that her decline was so swift that medical personnel could not do anything to save her; but records brought to light recently as discovery in a wrongful death suit have revealed that the young Ms. Griffin had no detectable blood pressure or pulse a full two hours before her death. Yet she was still cleared to be sent into court that same day and no doctor ever even came to check on her.

Throughout the day, according to the records, she reported feeling “so sick.” At 1 a.m., less than seven hours before she died, she told [nurse Magdalena] Grodzki she was having a seizure. The nurse reported seeing her vomit. There is no sign in the medical records that a doctor saw Griffen at any time that night.

An inmate in the room with her said Griffen was “sick from the second she got there” and got worse fast.

“She was very, very pale and had to keep getting up to vomit,” said Diane Solari, who was also detoxing from heroin. “They were giving her medication for vomiting and diarrhea but whatever she took she threw up immediately five minutes later. Soon she couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom and was throwing up in a bucket. I’d empty it and she’d throw up again.”

“She was so sick,” said Solari, who shared a room with Griffen and two other inmates. “She was begging for an I.V. She must have said it 30 times.”Before sunrise, Solari said, Griffen became too weak to walk and fell on her face trying to get to the toilet. “She was drawn pale, gray. She couldn’t stand up,” Solari said.” She could talk but her mouth was dry. I never saw anybody that sick.”

Only when Ms. Solari screamed upon seeing her roommate turn blue did the medical staff come running. But the young Ms. Griffen was dead within minutes.

To the prison’s credit, medical care has apparently improved significantly since this tragic incident, particularly in the area of detox. This is enormously important, as it is rare for me to see a female recently arrested who is NOT in the midst of coming down off something. There’s a widely held misperception that a couple of days in jail, away from access to drugs, is going to do an addict good. But the process of detox, particularly for heavy users, is brutal and horrific. A person who is merely left with nothing is going to get severely sick - to dismiss this process as helpful for a system-clearing is to ignore the risk of death. So to know that the situation is at least being recognized (and I have heard good things about Framingham’s current detox system) is a good sign. But the story of Ms. Griffen, which just reeks of apathy and a perception of the inhumanity of inmates, still breaks my heart.