An Inmate’s Death in Jail and a Journalist’s Search for Why

This article couldn't have come at a better time. I run a local accountability blog in Itasca County, Minnesota. We recently had a similar death in the local jail and I am looking into it. I don't have the resources to put into this case, as I work on my own, but it's importance trumps finances. This article has provided much needed guidance. The justice system is in dire need of reform, and this is just one more example of how it diminishes the value of a human being. Thank you so much for this article and all the work put into it.

This is such an important story, because the telling of it reveals the awful dehumanization of the incarcerated that takes place in corrections facilities, and in society. And the silencing of that seems particularly acute in the case of black and brown people.

Thank you for writing this story. It seems clear that this is a violation of cruel and unusual punishment. Also, there's NO policy about how to handle prisoners complaining of physical ailments/pain? That seems highly dubious, but if true, that's lawsuit-worthy. Guards with no medical training should not be allowed to determine who can see a doctor and who cannot.

No reasonable belief that a SIX DAY stomach ache that causes enough agony to make someone shriek in pain might cause someone to DIE. My question is: How stupid are corrections workers and how stupid are judges? They obviously WANT to let the corrections workers off the hook SO BADLY that they will accept the flimsiest of excuses. Why are the psychopaths running our jails?

All human beings are created equal , whether emperor, CEO, political leaders, or anybody else with money and power. But only the poor and destitutes succumb to this type of destiny. Imagine this happening to the rich and powerful , it would have been a completely different story.

I see many responses that claim how great European healthcare is compared to American healthcare. While I believe that American healthcare needs an overhaul, I can't help but remember all the stories I have heard over the years about how horrible healthcare was in Britain and how the Scandinavian countries simply gave up on you after a certain age (I think 55, maybe 65). I always felt like, wow, the Scandinavian countries are very enlightened except they just expect you to die at their age limit. No point in spending time and money on old people. So, yes, we are burdened with companies like Kaiser (a supposed non-profit company) whose senior execs make millions, but I am not persuaded that Europe has the ideal system.

thanks for your investigative reporting to bring this to light. in jail for shoplifting? Died because the correctional officers are empowered to make medical decisions about the seriousness of a person's complaint? Elkhart County prosecutor who lets this go? Perhaps ordered to do her job and stay out of the culpability question? And what about the pay, the working conditions and the supervision for the COs, which in my experience has been uniformly awful. So sad. So avoidable. So America of the 21st century.

In the first article from 1/30, there is the following text: In Indiana’s criminal code, unlike in some other states ... inmates in correctional facilities are not considered dependents; Ms. Dockery’s caregivers are thus not criminally liable for failing to provide help. “Do I want to see accountability? From the perspective of, no one should have to suffer like this, the answer is absolutely yes,” Ms. Becker added. “From the perspective of, is that something I have the power to control? Unfortunately not,” she said. Federal prosecutors could pursue criminal charges in such a case, but rarely do. The state grants itself the power to incarcerate but not to assume responsibility for those in their charge. This allows authorities to wash their hands of any institutional culpability. It also underlies the state's conscious denial of adequate resources in staffing, especially medical. This story contains all the same vile sickness of spirit that contributed to trump's double digit win in Indiana. We just don't care what the state does in our name since it doesn't do it to people like us. And there is no one with power in the state with the sense of decency and outrage to say it is simply not right that it be done in our name. This must change. Instead, in the absence of such moral authority in this part of Kafka land, the cumbersome alternative of a legal suit is the only apparent option. Thanks for the articles!

Unfortunately, this sort of callousness towards inmates -- in jails and prisons -- is commonplace. As a criminal defense lawyer, I could give numerous examples from my own experience. Just one example: An inmate I knew who was dying of cancer while serving life sentence was denied the most simple requests to ease his pain/discomfort. The correctional officers in the medical unit where he was housed made bets about which inmates would die first and openly discussed the bets in front of the sick inmates. It was a shockingly inhumane environment.

Lamekia Dockery’s story, unfortunately, is not unique. It happens regularly throughout North American and the rest of the world. It happened to Teresa Gratton, who passed last year because of a wrongfully prescribed methadone overdose while incarcerated in a Canadian prison as an immigration detainee. Correctional officers are interested in only one thing: overtime. Deputies often turn their backs on savage fights—over a package of Ramen, an ill-timed glance, the wrong gang affiliation—and other abuses that take place in prisons. Prison physicians in many parts of the United States are superannuated and incompetent. Correctional officers and prison physicians are indifferent to inmate suffering—because they do not view inmates as human beings. Deputies engage in dirty tricks like turning off the sewage, exacerbating the tiny sordidness of cells, which contribute to mental breakdown. Even a brief stay in prison can break down a healthy, alert adult. Typical problems include hypertension, degradation of cardiovascular and gastrointestinal health, and rapid weight change. Prison psychiatrists are overly quick to diagnose inmates’ psychological condition after a brief interview. They are often wrong. Prisons destroy healthy people, many of whom eventually wind up homeless or worse upon release, unless they have access to a supportive family. Prison culture dehumanizes and brutalizes everyone associated with these institutions.

When the state locks someone up, they accept responsibility for the well being of that person. A person in jail is like a helpless baby as they are restrained from helping themselves. Their medical care is at the whim of the corrections officers so when an inmate dies as a result being denied medical care, this is criminal like leaving a baby in a hot car. In the days of the Russian gulag, prisoners on transport trains often died of thirst because the guards could not be bothered to bring water to the prisoners. Here, the correctional officers ignored her calls for help thinking Ms. Dockery was malingering. That is not their call! Any inmate requesting help should be given help regardless of inconvenience.

This is why journalism matters. Thank you for your tenacity and for telling Lamekia's story. It is truly appalling for her to have died in this way.

It's very hard to write with tears streaming down my face. Former Indiana governor Mike Pence tells audiences that 'life is winning' in America. Life in the United States is winning if you're white. Life is winning if you're a millionaire or a billionaire. If you're a cisgender male, you probably feel like a winner. Sadly, a majority of Americans don't feel like we're winners. Whether we're gay or trans, Latino or Black, a woman, a migrant, or we're native born, our government treats us like 2nd class citizens. If we are battling an addiction or saddled with a chronic medical condition, we are haunted by stress. We wonder when our access to medication and healthcare will be cut off. Grocery prices, utilities, and the cost of housing, constantly increase. Will we become homeless and end up in the street? Any one of us could be Lamekia Dockery. Life isn't winning in America. It's killing us.

These types of egregious displays of state indifference to the power it exercises over inmates' lives usually are dealt with by a legal suit charging all those with authority with abuse of power, unconstitutional violence against their charges, etc. When there is, in addition, a stonewall of official idiotic obstruction set up from the beginning to justify not conducting a thorough public inquiry, you can smell the stench of how life is lived in countless authoritarian states with whom we really don't like to compare ourselves, but increasingly resemble. Nothing in this account could not also have happened inside any far off rural prison in Russia or China. Were it not for the free press in this country, however, we would never have learned of this initial story and, hopefully, its sequels as the investigation and legal suit proceed, slowly but surely. In the meantime, a natural question to pose is why this story had to be initiated by the Times, and not a state newspaper (or public access tv/radio station) closer to Elkhardt. Or does that merely reflect the woeful state of journalism, and why that is such a direct threat to the proper functioning of our representative democracy?

It is unconscionable that the guards are not held responsible because they didn't believe someone could die from a stomachache. How ignorant. A reasonable person, using reasonable judgment, would seek medical care for someone with the symptoms and presentation reported. THAT is the standard to which they should be held. Since when is ignorant "belief" allowed to substitute for thoughtful and reasonable judgment and decisions by those who hold power over others?

Every guard, medical personnel, administrative person and member of the board that is responsible even in the slightest degree should be held fully accountable for the brutal death of this inmate. Ms. Dockery was denied not only her rights as prisoner but also her rights as a human being. The guards were callous, indifferent, angry, annoyed and bent on making Ms. Dockery more miserable rather than addressing her obviously sick condition. They didn't want to be bothered with a women who was black, screaming, in pain and dying. They just didn't care. The refusal to file criminal charges is a coverup and refusal to acknowledge the abuse heaped upon this woman. The Elkhart County prosecutor should also be removed from her position. She is equally inhuman. I don't know how much registering my disgust will result in any change but I certainly hope that the NYT and others will continue to seek justice for Ms. Dockery. For a start, every prison guard involved in this brutality should be summarily dismissed. Hopefully a further investigation will make this crime known and punished.

Wow, no wonder no one would speak to you, not even the lawyer who only sent empty messages. I'll bet they are scrambling on damage control behind the scenes right now. I hope the law eventually comes down hard on everyone responsible, starting at the top, and not just the poorly-educated, poorly-managed, poorly-paid, and insufficient in number basic employees. Turn up the pressure.

Unbelievable, the dehumanization To me this story is a million times more disturbing than anything else I’ve read this week

It will be interesting to find out how many inmates other than this non-violent black woman, doing time for a petty crime, received medical treatment during the same time period she was denied (ignored). And, what race they were.

Thank you for exposing what you have (so far) of this travesty of justice. It is outrageous that in Goshen, Indiana (population 33,240), this much hate, vitriol, animosity and obvious non-compliance can be so incredibly strong.

A little googling turns up other allegations about justice in Elkhart County -- coerced confessions, mistreatment of the vulnerable, police misconduct, and cover-ups, together with efforts to suppress public criticism. My guess is that if your reporter were to spend more time there, she'd find quite a lot of other interesting stories.

The way the Elkhart Board of Commissioners act is an indication that they know what happened was wrong and are attempting to limit at all costs any liability by the facility and their staff. What it also shows is that people who have privilege/power assume it to be their right and thus abandon any empathy, compassion they have for fellow human beings under the pretext that they follow the law/rules. They forget that it was their ilk that penned these in the first place to serve themselves at the expense of everyone else.

I hope that her family hires a civil lawyer. They should sue for wrongful death.

pence's state

It's not only Elkhart County, Ind. Look at what just happened at the federal detention center in NYC, where detainees (not necessarily guilty) were kept for a week without heat or electricity, in sub-zero conditions. Those in charge were in no hurry make repairs and from the last report, some of the cells are still unheated.

Great work on an unfortunately sad story. Thank you for staying with it.

Stanford health experiment. Need I say more?

I do not recognize America any longer. Thank you for caring about Ms. Dockery's death. It is human to care about another human's death, and to try to prevent a fellow human's death by caregiving. The people of Indiana in their wisdom elected the Vice President as their governor. Apparently *a lot of people in Indiana* have hardened their hearts against compassion. I bet the guards who failed to prevent Ms. Dockery's death also consider themselves devout Christians.

I get particularly irate when "officers" make up laws and rules that violate the Constitution. Who the hell do they think they are and how can they be allowed to keep their jobs. EVERY person on US soil is entitled to their civil rights, that's the law. I can only imagine the "payback" the inmate faced when he returned to the facility.

Thank you for bringing this story our attention. This is sad and pressure needs to be put on the mostly privately owned prisons to do better.

It is very rare that people in positions of power are ever held accountable in this country. Much less so in the deplorable republican states so many unlucky people find themselves in with no practical way out. I'm saddened but not the least bit surprised by this story. The problem lies in tge violent arrogant and uncaring culture that pervades so much of this once-great nation.

Outrageous! How do we train our guards for their jobs? There is a great need to train our law enforcement personnel differently shall I say more humanely. We also need a different approach to our justice system, minor (read non-white) offenders given rough sentences while "white collar" offenders who destroy our nation get minor fines and short sentences.

We have a problem with the prison-industrial complex. But I rarely see discussions about the guards who work there. Yes, it's a tough job, but apparently it is one that strips those workers of their humanity. Ms. Dockery might be alive if ONE had managed to care. I'd like to see some information on how we can begin that process to truly create change in our prison systems.

The entire US prison system (hard to call it anything like 'justice') is a shameful structure of hostility to those people we have already neglected in so many ways. I live in Idaho, where only the staggering financial burdens have slowly begun changing legislators' minds about the wisdom of boasting the largest percentage of imprisoned people in the country. So much for civilization; for community; or for Christianity. What we see is people too unwilling to do the work, learn the material, begin addressing the problems of leaving so many in our society uneducated, unemployed, unhoused, and denied healthcare. What we see is ignorant and insensitive people getting themselves elected.

This sort of thing goes on routinely in this nation's jails and prisons. Ms. Nir may not have been aware, but it's not news to anyone who's paying attention. If NYT wants the real story, it should start looking at correctional systems based on per-inmate medical expenditures. The paper, I suspect, will find that these sorts of things happen all the time in states and counties that skimp on medical care. Illinois is a prime example. There has been one horrendous case after another of inmates dying horrifically painful deaths from preventable causes. The media has written extensively about this. Inmates have sued and prevailed in class-action lawsuits. It's been in mainstream media headlines. It's all over websites where families of inmates trade horror stories and console each other. But nothing changes. That's the story, NYT. When everyone knows and nothing changes, something is deeply wrong. It is nice that a person remote from this reality can parachute in and see what it's really like and write a story that captures the truth. The truth is, unless NYT or some other institution that matters stays on this, really on this, nothing is going to change. More people will die in pain from easily treatable maladies. A few settlements will be thrown out, with settlements being cheaper than reform. And, end of day, folks are still going to die doubled-over in their cells from appendicitis or some other sickness that we learned how to cure a century ago.

Abuse of power. Discrimination. Human rights violation. This is criminal. Hold each one of these criminals accountable for her death! Thank you for being persistent to expose these abhorring behavior ... My condolences to the family. Im sure they are outraged and in deep searing pain.

As a correctional nurse this article is disturbing. A quick nursing assessment would have indicated something was seriously wrong. The symptoms Of acute severe pain not managed with Tylenol and vomiting are red flags. This woman was in pain as her stomach acid burned through her abdomen. This is one of the most painful ways to die compounded with knowing that no one in charge is not concerned. Yes of course there is malingering in correctional settings just like in the ER but there are ways to discern the malingering from the truly emergent cases. What was the process to get medical help in the jail? Thank you NYT for reporting on this story. Hopefully the story will be a catalyst for change.

Thank you for asking why. Now the question remains, will there be a change in practices to avoid such tragedies?

Thank you, Sarah for your persistence in covering this story. I hope you continue to pursue it. The fact a government agency is attempting to avoid responsibility for an entirely preventable death is an outrage--one that we can ill afford to allow.

We view prisoners as less than human. That message pervades almost all our politicians speeches about law and order. And the attitude, unspoken though it is, is obvious: she was a black woman, a shoplifter, a drug user but not a human being. We continue to treat prisoners like garbage despite the evidence showing that they too are human beings and respond well to being treated as such. A truly Christian nation would not allow this continue.

Six days. Unforgivable.

This is an outrageous story, but I have no doubt that many prisoners with medical needs are neglected. This one happened to result in death. Prisoners are people. CO's are also people, but for some reason they don't seem to know how to act appropriately when someone needs help. This woman needed help. A long tangent would be the people in prison who suffer from mental illness. I think there needs to be accountability in this case. The guards who refused to take her to medical, but put her in solitary confinement instead. Does that make any sense? Justice begins with this article and unearthing the truth behind this woman's death. My sympathies to the family - and, to top it off, she was there because of a probation violation.

This woman should not have died. Someone in authority should have gotten a doctor, or taken her to a hospital, but "as a drug user, a black woman, and an incarcerated person, her human anguish was dismissed." Our greatest president did not free the slaves - men and women - so that they could die in jail, but so that they could be equal partners in the American dream. Now that dream comes in many colors and many languages, but not of us will be truly free if even one is not.

The US as a human rights beacon? I hope our Secretary of State will read this story before lecturing other countries. Somebody need to file a wrongful death suit, and bankrupt that barbaric work-release center.

So healthcare providers take an oath to do no harm. As a nurse myself, I want to know - does “do no harm” exclude inmates?

Another life gone, while under control of law enforcement. This poor soul was apparently the victim of abuse, neglect and just inhumane treatment by the correctional facility. Being a person of color ,certainly did not help her..but humanity is our human responsibility regardless of color, background atc. Looks like the guards and facility management treat their dogs, and cats better than the they treated her. GREAT reporting.. thank you . RIP

The idea that the guards and other prison personnel didn't know that a stomachache could cause death is laughable. Stomach cancer causes a stomachache. A burst appendix causes a stomachache. No reasonable person states that a stomach ache can't cause cancer. These guards should be charged with homicide as well as torture. I hope the family sues the people involved but that won't hold the individuals who committed this crime accountable.

Thank You for your compassion, persistence and intelligence This is an outrageous tragedy and your courageous reporting is important in creating change...and it will!

Rest in peace, Ms. Dockery. And stay brave, New York Times. Time to recall that prosecutor and hold the heartless guards and their supervisors criminally responsible.

It would seem the only difference between the “criminals” and the corrections staff, is that the corrections staff happen to be wearing uniforms with badges. This smells like a cover up plain and simple and is a classic example of deliberate indifference. The DOJ should be all over this and those that were involved should be held accountable.

The conduct of the guards evidences a callous disregard for the people in that facility. Their responses are unacceptable. If the prosecutor believes that none is culpable because they did not believe that Ms. Dockery's condition would lead to death, it suggests that (a) additional training should be mandatory and (b) that other individuals imprisoned in the same facility may face a similar fate should they become ill and in need of care. And, why is a civil lawsuit not being filed?

This is a moral outrage, a horrific dereliction of duty, and a crime on the part of the county and whomever trains and supervises those guards. Thank you, NYT, for shining a light on this tragedy. May your reporting hasten the road to justice and some meaningful correction in the system that killed this woman.

Elkhart county correction officers killed that young lady and Vickie Becker needs to be the first to be charged with a murder charge. Elkhart is a corrupt system... I cry because reading this I've witnessed how unprofessional we as inmate are treated. Elkhart county needs to be shut down completely

Thank you for your work. please keep it up.

Surely we can do better in this country.

Thanks for the background on how the report evolved. It is one more horror story from our criminal justice system. I don't know if it was more upsetting to hear about guards beating a prisoner to death, as in one of the series on NYS prisons that was done by the Times, or to imagine a desperate woman, in pain, being mocked and jerked around by ignorant guards looking for ways to punish her over 6 days as she approached death. People at the bottom rung of the prison work hierarchy often feel put upon, used and abused, and in many cases this may be correct, and it is necessary to assure that working conditions are acceptable in order to assure humane treatment of prisoners. But compassion for the COs doesn't excuse abusive or neglectful treatment of prisoners. Still it's up to us out here, the public, to pay attention and demand and support reform.

Please let us know what your further investigation reveals. This seems to be a horrifying account of maltreatment. There is no valid legal excuse for this and a lawsuit will probably yield significant damages - no comfort for the poor inmate. Unfortunately, the individual staff and their supervisors that are basically responsible for this horrendous (in)action will not be fully penalized. Perhaps firing or administrative leave versus loss of future income and their own lives wrecked. The taxpayers will ultimately pay the burden without really understanding how the bureaucrats and actors can not be held accountable; and may actually be rewarded.