Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A proposed settlement has been reached in a federal lawsuit that claimed medical care at a Virginia women's prison is so shoddy that it violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
A notice of a "settlement in principle" was filed in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville on Tuesday, and a trial that had been set for next week was canceled.
Five inmates at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women filed the lawsuit in July 2012 against several Virginia Department of Corrections officials and the private contractor they hired to provide medical care. The plaintiffs alleged that prisoners suffer prolonged pain and deterioration of their health, and that some have even died because their medical needs were unmet.
U.S. District Judge Norman Moon certified the lawsuit as a class action covering all of the prison's 1,200 inmates last week, then rejected the defendants' motion for a judgment in their favor Tuesday. He also ruled in the inmates' favor on two points — that state prison officials can't abdicate their responsibility to provide adequate health care by hiring a contractor, and that the plaintiffs had serious medical needs.
The settlement immediately followed.
Brenda Castaneda, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center who represented the inmates, said the key provision in the settlement will be appointment of an independent monitor to oversee health care at the prison and report to the court. Health care policies covering all Virginia prisons also will be revised, she said.
"This will take a number of months to work through," Castaneda said. "We will proffer an order to the court and the judge will hold a hearing, probably sometime next summer."
Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said in an email that the agency does not comment on litigation.
When the lawsuit was filed, however, Traylor said many offenders arrive at the prison with long-neglected health problems and "often want immediate cures."
The five inmates who filed the lawsuit said in court papers that they have suffered a litany of illnesses and maladies that have not been properly treated, including blood clots, unexplained weight loss, mysterious growths, hepatitis C, staph infections, degenerative disc disease and incontinence.
They also claimed deficient health care contributed to the deaths of at least two inmates: Darlene White, a diabetic who died in the infirmary after complaining of severe headache and nausea, and Jeanna Wright, whose complaints of severe stomach pain and bleeding were dismissed by prison doctors until she was finally diagnosed by an outside physician as having abdominal cancer.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
