‘Lapses’ Blamed in Death of Inmate
By Mari A. Schaefer and Jeff Gammage, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jul. 25–A mentally ill woman died last year after being held for six weeks in Delaware County Prison without receiving medication for a thyroid condition, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
The suit says the family of 38-year-old Cassandra "Sandy" Morgan of Aston repeatedly "attempted to contact" the privately operated county prison to express concern over her mental condition and hypothyroid problem. The family’s lawyer, Harold I. Goodman, said the family had been "virtually ignored."
Morgan died in Riddle Memorial Hospital on March 29, 2006, four days after lapsing into a coma at the prison. Her death resulted from complications caused by hypothyroidism.
She had been imprisoned after being charged with shoplifting at the Wal-Mart in Upper Chichester on Feb. 16, 2006.
James Morgan, her brother, said that the Public Defender’s Office had not returned his repeated calls for help, and that the prison had made no attempt to contact them about his sister’s medical condition.
"At any point in the system where she could have been saved and treated humanely, there were lapses," said Goodman, of Philadelphia. The lawyer called the case an "institutional failure" and a convenient way to get Morgan off the streets.
Michael Joseph Harper, the assistant public defender who represented Morgan, said he had not heard from her family until she had been hospitalized in a coma. "I returned those calls."
Among defendants in the lawsuit are the county, the prison, Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, and the Geo Group Inc., the Florida company that manages the prison.
A call to John Reilly, deputy superintendent of the George W. Hill Correctional Facility — the county prison — was not returned yesterday. Robert DiOrio, the lawyer for the prison, said he was not familiar with the case and would not comment.
Morgan was arrested after trying to leave the Wal-Mart with a shopping cart containing more than $550 in merchandise.
According to police reports, Morgan said that she "was the owner of Wal-Mart," and that "everything in the store belongs to her."
She was arraigned, bail was set at $10,000, and she was sent to Delaware County Prison.
On March 25, 2006, four weeks after she was found "incompetent to stand trial," Morgan was discovered unresponsive on the floor of her cell.
The lawsuit says "a series of institutional failures" began months earlier when Morgan was released from Crozer-Chester Medical Center. She had been committed there on Jan. 19, 2006, after an altercation with two of her sisters.
Crozer-Chester determined that Morgan should be transferred to Norristown State Hospital for long-term psychiatric care, the suit contends. Her family and Morgan agreed with the transfer.
Morgan was found at that time to be schizophrenic and noncompliant with treatment for her hypothyroid condition.
Instead of transferring her to Norristown, however, a doctor with Crozer-Chester discharged Morgan to her family.
Calls to Crozer-Chester for comment yesterday were not returned.
Nine days after her release, Morgan was arrested at Wal-Mart.
Morgan first developed symptoms of schizophrenia while a freshman at York College, according to her brother.
He said Sandy Morgan had loved children and poetry, and had once run track and played in the band at Chester High School. She grew up in a close-knit family of seven children, he said.
Even after her illness was diagnosed, she earned a bachelor’s degree at Neumann College in Delaware County and was working toward a master’s degree in education. She was also a caregiver for her bed-ridden mother.
"I know her condition seemed to worsen once my mother passed," James Morgan said. He said the family had been very involved in his sister’s life and care.
The experience of mentally ill inmates has recently been the the subject of a Justice Department report. It’s "a national tragedy," the National Alliance on Mental Illness said last year, after the release of the federal study.
In the report, issued in September, researchers found that 64 percent of prisoners in local jails, 56 percent in state prisons, and 45 percent in federal lockups showed symptoms of serious mental illness. The rates were even higher for women.
County jails hold inmates — including potentially innocent people awaiting arraignment or trial — for shorter periods, while state and federal prisons hold offenders sentenced to a year or more. Generally, the study found, the longer the incarceration, the greater the opportunity for an inmate to be assessed and treated.
Mentally ill inmates in state prisons were most likely to receive treatment — but still, only 34 percent were being helped. In local jails, the figure was 17 percent.
The ramifications are profound — for corrections officers and prison administrators as well as inmates — because those with unaddressed mental-health problems are more likely to assault another prisoner or an officer, the Justice Department found.
In Pennsylvania, there is no uniform system or standard for providing care in local jails, according to National Alliance on Mental Illness officials.
"Every county is a little bit different, and you’ve got 67 counties," said James Jordan executive director of NAMI Pennsylvania.
A NAMI task force has begun a study of the care in county jails, including access to treatment and medication.
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Read coverage of other deaths at Delaware County Prison at http://go.philly.com/inquiries
Contact staff writer Mari A. Schaefer at 610-892-9149 or mschaefer@phillynews.com.
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