Over a span of days, Joshua England’s pleas for help became more desperate.
“My stomach hurts so, so bad.”
Instead he was given Pepto-Bismol and told to drink water and eat fibrous food.
The Pepto-Bismol didn’t help.
The next day England wrote that his pain was so bad he could barely breathe.
He couldn’t eat or sleep.
The physician assistant found that his pulse was racing but didn’t conduct an abdominal exam.
Instead, he chalked up England’s symptoms to constipation and prescribed a laxative.
But Joshua England didn’t have that option.
He was inmate No.
775261 at Joseph Harp Correctional Center, a medium-security facility in central Oklahoma.
He again wrote down how it was hard to breathe or even lie down.
This time the licensed practical nurse who saw him consulted with the prison’s supervising physician, Robert Balogh.
Balogh prescribed ibuprofen over the phone.
As medical professionals downplayed England’s symptoms, he continued to deteriorate.
On May 29, 2018, a corrections officer discovered Englandslumped over on the floor next to his cell.
The Choctaw Nation kid who loved fishing and cattle ranching had died, just weeks after turning 21.
Autopsy records show that the cause of death was a ruptured appendix.
Appendicitis is easily treated with minimally invasive outpatient surgery.
Even treating a ruptured appendix is considered routine as long as the patient is immediately hospitalized.
“You had a system where, many times, the physician was not there,” Balogh said.
“There were some ways that information could fall through the cracks.”
No other judge on a case mentioned in this story agreed to comment.
Prisoners lost a vast majority of them 85%.
In BI’s sample of Eighth Amendment cases, just 14% settled.
Many of the settlements were sealed.
Of the rest, none involved an admission of wrongdoing by prison officials.
In 11 cases less than 1% of the sample the plaintiffs won relief in court.
But prisoners face a litany of hurdles, he said, starting with the difficulty they face obtaining records.
They don’t have experience in the rules of civil procedure, he said.
They don’t know how to plan a litigation strategy, or draft jury instructions, or take depositions.
Here’s what it takes.
State taxpayers, rather than the named defendants, footed the bill.
BI’s data indicates that plaintiffs actually fare somewhat better before juries than before judges.
Of the 1,488 cases in BI’s sample, prisoners prevailed more often before juries.
Just 2% of the cases BI reviewed were decided by a jury.
Yet more than half of the 11 prisoners who won their suits had jury trials.
The Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections declined to comment on the record.
The treatment kept getting delayed as his condition deteriorated.
Dean died of kidney cancer in 2022 at the age of 61.
Wexford and the Illinois Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment.
This time the award was$155,100.
Wexford, in a court filing, denied all of the allegations.
BI’s database is packed with cases that also allege significant harm but the plaintiffs lost.
Both cases were dismissed when judges found the prisoners could not prove their doctors were deliberately indifferent.
Even then, she said, doctors denied and delayed chemotherapy as the cancer spread.
The US District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed her case when she died.
There was nobody to take over for her as plaintiff.
A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections declined to comment on the tongue cancer case.
Unlike prisoner plaintiffs, these surviving relatives didn’t have to overcome the PLRA’s hurdles.
“They’re not getting their loved one back.”
Armeni’s case is one of a handful in our sample in which a lawsuit forced substantive change.
Ramos shot Perez multiple times with birdshot, a kind of ammunition used to hunt small game.
“They lit him up,” Armeni told BI.
“The birdshot was from his waist up.
It was a murder.”
After an eight-year legal battle, the state settled last year with Perez’s family for $1.6 million.
That same year, a case filed by Richards settled for $2.25 million.
In exchange, Richards' attorney agreed that his client wouldn’t talk to the press about the case.
Ramosmaintained in courtthat firing his weapon was a reasonable use of force to break up a fight between prisoners.
The Nevada Department of Corrections declined to comment; Ramos' attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
Ramos was charged with involuntary manslaughter.
In 2019, he entereda plea deal.
In exchange for community service and a mental-health evaluation, he avoided prison.
