The New York state prison system failed David Blanding for years, and those failures put his life in jeopardy, according to a federal judge.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, in a recent opinion, found prison officials acted with \u201cdeliberate indifference\u201d in managing medical care for Blanding, who has bladder cancer and is incarcerated at an upstate prison. They failed to provide him prescribed medicine, to transport him to appointments and even to inform him of a new cancer diagnosis, the ruling found.<\/p>\n
In a stinging rebuke of the prison bureaucracy, Kaplan issued an injunction ordering the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to develop a treatment plan for Blanding, 61, who is currently being held at Green Haven Correctional Facility, a prison about 70 miles north of New York City. He also instructed the department to report to the court every two weeks with updates on his care.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf prison officials are allowed to remain deliberately indifferent to his medical needs, Blanding risks dying of cancer (or at the very least enduring additional bouts of severe symptoms),\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n
Nicole Whitaker, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said she could not comment on an incarcerated person\u2019s medical treatment or pending litigation. In court papers, the state argued that Blanding\u2019s medical care \u201chas hardly been neglectful as he paints it,\u201d adding there was insufficient evidence of ongoing constitutional violations or fault by individual prison officials.<\/p>\n
Kaplan\u2019s opinion and court documents describe an overwhelmed prison bureaucracy struggling to provide care for an aging population amid persistent staffing shortages, failing to provide even basic treatment in the face of life-threatening diagnosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just should never have to come to this,\u201d said Stephanie Panousieris, one of Blanding\u2019s attorneys. \u201cUp and down the chain of command, there were failures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Incarcerated people are not required to receive the same quality of care as \u201cwell insured and financially capable people\u201d outside of prison, Kaplan wrote in his opinion. The state is obligated, nonetheless, he wrote, to meet the serious medical needs of the people in its custody. Not doing so could cause \u201cphysical torture or a lingering death\u201d and violate constitutional protections from cruel and unusual punishment.<\/p>\n
Kaplan found Blanding had been denied medicine doctors prescribed to manage his bladder cancer. He said they failed to transport Blanding to the procedures meant to catch his cancer from recurring, as it eventually did, multiple times. And when a biopsy revealed he also had cancer in his prostate, the system failed to inform him.<\/p>\n
Instead, Blanding learned of his new diagnosis nine months after it was discovered, from his own attorneys, according to the judge\u2019s ruling. By the time doctors performed a biopsy, it had advanced to the most dangerous grade measured.<\/p>\n
The record, Kaplan wrote, was \u201cnothing short of disgraceful\u201d and evinced an \u201cappalling and deliberate indifference to the physical health of a man committed\u201d to the state\u2019s custody.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens who chairs the Senate’s crime victims, crime and correction committee, said in a statement that she was not surprised Blanding had to go to court to get the care he needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudge Kaplan\u2019s injunction against [the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision] confirms what incarcerated individuals, their families, and advocates have been telling us for years \u2014 that withholding medical care from incarcerated New Yorkers is an egregious, but common abuse of power taking place in our state prisons,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u2018He was ignored\u2019<\/p>\n
Blanding was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2019, about eight years into an 18-years-to-life sentence for attempted first-degree burglary, according to the judge\u2019s ruling and incarceration records. In January 2020, he underwent surgery to have a tumor removed from his bladder, according to court records.<\/p>\n
A couple months later, a urologist prescribed an immunotherapy treatment to reduce the chances of the cancer returning, followed by a screening procedure to see if he would need additional care. A second doctor agreed with the treatment plan, according to court papers.<\/p>\n
But Blanding never received the immunotherapy treatment, Kaplan said. He didn\u2019t get the screening procedure anytime soon, either. When Blanding repeatedly asked medical providers at the prison why he was not receiving the care his doctor ordered, \u201che was ignored or told that he was getting all the care he needed,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n
In the years that followed, Blanding experienced a repeated cycle, according to court papers. Doctors would recommend treatment to address his cancer or prevent it from spreading, prison officials would delay his care and his condition would worsen.<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s opinion lays out a series of emails, letters, medical parole applications and phone calls from Blanding\u2019s attorneys to prison officials, urging them to provide the medical care he needed or release him from custody so he could seek it on his own.<\/p>\n
Panousieris said the years Blanding has spent advocating for better treatment while his health deteriorated has been \u201cexhausting.\u201d Not knowing exactly what was happening in his own body has also taken a psychological toll, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aHe wants to make it home to his wife,\u201d Panousieris said. \u201cHe was certainly not given the death penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the years that Blanding has awaited care, the attorney said, the likelihood of his cancer metastasizing has increased by multiple levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hope is that we’re not too late in him getting the treatment he needs desperately to prevent that from happening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Struggling\u2019 to provide care<\/p>\n
Kaplan said he felt the need to intervene in Blanding\u2019s case because prison officials as high up as state Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello have \u201cknowingly disregarded significant risks to his health on numerous occasions\u201d and failed to act in response to his grievances and communications from his attorneys over the years.<\/p>\n
While officials say they have been more attentive to Blanding\u2019s needs since he filed a lawsuit in June, Kaplan said there was a \u201cvirtual certainty\u201d that the lapses in treatment would continue without a court order.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Blanding\u2019s case is not isolated and is a stark reminder of the critical importance of oversight, accountability, and advocacy in protecting the health and dignity of incarcerated individuals,\u201d said Bernadette Brown, an attorney with the Center for Appellate Litigation, who is also representing Blanding.<\/p>\n
Access to healthcare is one of the top concerns incarcerated people share when monitors from the Correctional Association of New York visit prisons across the state, said Sumeet Sharma, director of policy and communications at the prison oversight organization.<\/p>\n
Sharma said the group has visited Green Haven, where Blanding is incarcerated, multiple times in recent months, following an uptick in deaths in the prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw repeatedly during these prison visits that the facility itself was struggling with being able to provide adequate medical care to the population,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During monitoring visits, leadership at Green Haven have told monitors that incarcerated people were regularly missing outside medical appointments, because the prison didn\u2019t have enough staff to transport people to and from visits to the doctor, Sharma said. Staffing shortages across the prison system also cause delays for more basic, in-house medical care, he said.<\/p>\n
Some correctional facilities have specialized medical units to provide advanced medical care, Sharma said. But Green Haven doesn\u2019t have one of those units, he said, and not everyone with serious medical needs can get a spot in the prisons that do.<\/p>\n
Panousieris said she hopes Blanding\u2019s case is unique, but she worries it reflects a broader breakdown in medical care in state prisons. She said many of her incarcerated clients have told her about the struggles they have faced to get treatment. Even more incarcerated people have no support system to advocate for their care, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worry for all of not only my incarcerated clients, but for all those who are in the custody of the State of New York and completely reliant on them \u2014 to keep them alive on the most basic level and treat them like human beings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York state prison system failed David Blanding for years, and those failures put his life in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-310769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}