As a bus full of convicts made its way from Connecticut to the western tip of Virginia, Lawrence Frazier had good reason to fear what awaited him at the mountaintop prison that would be his final destination.
Frazier, a diabetic inmate, later said he nearly died because he was not given insulin during the 22-hour trip in December.
Once he arrived at Wallens Ridge State Prison, Frazier claimed in a lawsuit, he continued to have problems getting insulin and medical care in a “supermax” facility where inmates are under the constant watch of shotgun-toting guards.
A federal judge dismissed Frazier’s lawsuit June 23, ruling that allegations of medical malpractice alone were not enough to make a claim of cruel and unusual punishment against the state prison in Wise County.
Less than two weeks later, Frazier was dead.
His lawsuit – along with letters written by Frazier’s cellmate and other inmates – raise new questions about conditions at Virginia’s two supermax prisons, which are being investigated by the FBI and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department.
“Here’s a guy who was screaming, basically, that he didn’t get the treatment he needed, and ultimately he dies,” said Richard Bieder, a Connecticut lawyer who represents Frazier’s family.
In handwritten papers filed May 25 in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Frazier claimed he was not given insulin on at least two occasions. And when he began to have seizures the day he lapsed into a coma, inmates say in letters, guards waited for more than an hour before responding to calls for help.
While the family is itching to file a lawsuit that might go further than Frazier’s jailhouse petition, Bieder said it is too soon to say what legal action he will take in a case that seems to offer more questions than answers.
This much is known: On the morning of June 29, Frazier was taken from his cell to the Wallens Ridge infirmary after apparently suffering from low blood sugar. Once there, he became combative and was shocked several times with a stun gun, prison officials have said.
Frazier, who then was strapped to a bed, was found unconscious some time later. He died July 4 at a Richmond hospital.
Connecticut prison officials have said Frazier likely died of heart failure, although an autopsy conducted in Virginia is pending.
With no autopsy results and several investigations still under way, speculation has abounded about what killed Frazier. Inmate advocacy groups such as Amnesty International have said it likely was the stun gun; the Virginia Department of Corrections countered that its study has eliminated electric shock as a factor.
Frazier’s lawsuit and letters from fellow inmates provide a new theory: That his death was caused, at least in part, by medical neglect.
Judi Walters of Friends and Family Who Care, a group opposed to the transfer of Frazier and about 500 other Connecticut inmates to Wallens Ridge, said letters she has received from inmates convince her that Frazier’s problems began long before guards zapped him with 50,000 volts from a stun gun.
“It starts with the level of medical care,” Walters said.
Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said earlier this week that there were no “documented complaints” from Frazier about his medical care.
Asked if prison officials had found any relationship between Frazier’s death and his medical treatment at Wallens Ridge, Traylor said he could not comment on a pending investigation.
In a “To whom it may concern” letter sent to Connecticut prison officials, Frazier’s cellmate wrote that, on the morning of June 28, Frazier became ill while eating breakfast and was taken to the infirmary for observation.
Frazier “looked kind of funny” when he was returned to his cell about noon that day, cellmate Angel Soto wrote in the letter. After eating an apple and some soup that Soto gave him, Frazier drifted off to sleep.
About 6 a.m. the following day, Soto said, he was awakened by the sound of Frazier falling out of his bed. “I jumped down from my bed and asked him if he wanted me to call for the medical personnel,” Soto wrote. “He was making weird noises, after a few seconds he cried out and said, ‘Yes, please.'”
Using an intercom to contact guards in a control room, Soto asked for help. More than an hour passed, he said, with Frazier having seizures so severe that Soto had to hold Frazier to keep his head from striking the wall.
“He kept saying to me that he was sorry for the way he was seizuring,” Soto wrote.
Finally, Soto said, a nurse and three correctional officers showed up. One guard was carrying a stun gun.
Soto said he was ordered out of the cell, but could hear Frazier screaming for help. “I also heard the nurse say she didn’t know what to do to another nurse who had come to help,” he wrote.
A few minutes later, guards carried Frazier out of the cell. The inmate looked “like a dead animal on a stick, legs and hands handcuffed. They were more worried about putting handcuffs and shackles on him than his medical needs,” Soto said.
Although one guard had a stun gun, Soto said he could not tell if the weapon was used on Frazier. But Victor West, another inmate housed nearby, wrote in a letter that he could hear a stun gun going off inside the cell while Frazier was yelling.
Frazier appeared to be unconscious when he was taken from his cell in chains, placed on a gurney and wheeled away, West wrote in a letter provided by Walters.
That account differs from the version told by Connecticut prison officials, who say the stun gun was not used until Frazier became combative in the infirmary. Members of Frazier’s family say his seizures might have been misconstrued as resistance.
In the days after Frazier’s death, Virginia officials referred most questions to the Connecticut Department of Correction. The only detailed information came in the form of a news release from Traylor announcing that an independent medical study had found that the stun gun played no role in Frazier’s death.
But Andrew Reese, the doctor who conducted the study, never examined Frazier’s body and has declined to talk about his findings. The Virginia Department of Corrections also has declined to release a copy of Reese’s report.
Autopsy results, meanwhile, are pending. Robert Holloway, regional administrator for the Medical Examiners Office in Richmond, said laboratory test results are needed before making a final determination.
Frazier is the second inmate to die at Wallens Ridge since the 1,200-bed facility opened in April 1999. David Tracy, another inmate from Connecticut, used a bed sheet to hang himself from his bunk bed earlier this year, officials have said.
Because Tracy did not fit the criteria for supermax inmates – the 20-year-old, small-time drug dealer was due to be released in November – his death led to opposition in Connecticut that only grew louder after Frazier died.
Critics of Wallens Ridge and its twin supermax facility, Red Onion State Prison, say that correctional officers at both facilities are trigger-happy with stun guns and shotguns that fire rubber pellets.
The facilities were designed to isolate the state’s most dangerous inmates from the rest of the prison population. But in a report released last year, Human Rights Watch asserted that Virginia prison officials are sending ordinary criminals to the supermaxes “in a blatant effort to fill large facilities whose capacity exceeds the state’s needs.”
Kara Peterman, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., confirmed Thursdayan investigation of the two prisons is under way, but declined further comment.
When confronted with criticism of the supermaxes, Virginia corrections Director Ron Angelone has dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated griping from inmates who resent being in the state’s toughest prisons.
Critics often ignore the fact that building two supermaxes has made the rest of the state’s prisons safer, Angelone recently told the Virginia Crime Commission.
Supermax supporters often point to the crimes inmates commit. Frazier, for example, was serving a 30- to 60-year sentence for rape. Connecticut officials said he broke into a suburban house, waited for the family to come home, then tied them up and raped the mother while other family members were forced to watch.
Although Traylor said there were no documented complaints about Frazier’s medical care, the inmate’s lawsuit contains copies of grievances that he filed making such a complaint.
“I have read your complaint that you almost died because of medical negligence,” Wallens Ridge Warden Stan Young wrote in an April 15 memorandum that is included as an exhibit to Frazier’s lawsuit. But because that allegedly happened during the bus ride to Wallens Ridge, Young wrote, Frazier should have raised the issue with Connecticut officials.
In Connecticut, however, an attorney for the Inmates Legal Assistance Program advised Frazier that he didn’t have a case against that state.
“Since you left Connecticut custody when you boarded the bus … your diabetes issue is not a Connecticut issue,” managing attorney Jane Starkowski wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to Frazier.
Left to fend for himself, Frazier wrote up a fill-in-the-blanks lawsuit and mailed it to Roanoke with authorization for the federal clerk’s office to deduct $150 from his inmate account to cover the filing fee.
“I’ve only met resistance,” Frazier said in a handwritten cover letter that accompanied his lawsuit. “I pray the court accept my suit, as it is because of the finger-pointing and blocking of my attempts to get a resolution.”