Rikers’ doctors are accused of causing the death of a prisoner in New York due to the failure of a drug withdrawal plan; ‘I just want to know what happened:’ mom

A new lawsuit alleges that city doctors failed a plan to relieve a mentally challenged prisoner on Rikers Island from prescription drugs, causing a catastrophic withdrawal seizure that led to his death.

In November 2021, Correctional Health Service doctors placed 28-year-old Malcolm Bowwright on a withdrawal plan in an attempt to reduce his body’s chemical dependency on clonazepam, a member of the benzodiazepine drug family that includes Xanax. Benzodiazepines are used to treat anxiety, seizures, and severe insomnia.

Three weeks later – on December 7, 2021, after allegedly participating in a tapering program – Boatwright had a seizure and died. He was one of 35 inmates who died in custody at the Department of Corrections in 2021 and 2022.

Boatwright did not suffer from epilepsy or seizures, according to the records of his attending physician at Bellevue Hospital. When his family requested medical records from the Corrections Health Service, the city’s agency that provides health care for prisoners, they instead received a file that was heavily redacted to the relevant information.

The allegations are contained in a $10 million lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court last week by Boatwright’s mother, LaShon Boatwright, against the Department of Corrections and five medical professionals.

“I just want to know what happened. That’s all. I deserve it,” said Botwright, 53, who lives in East Flatbush. “I’m just a parent who lost a child, just sitting here… No answers.”

The Correctional Health Service declined to comment, citing patient privacy laws.

The fourth of eight children who grew up in Brownsville, Malcolm Boatwright was on the autism spectrum, showing signs of anxiety and depression, and expressing suicidal thoughts, according to his mother. His father died of an aneurysm when he was 12 or 13 years old, an injury from which he did not fully recover, she added.

At the best of times, Malcolm Bowwright went to church regularly and liked to run errands for the elderly in the neighborhood.

“He was very happy. Very funny. He still had the mind of a child. He had the mind of a 15-year-old,” his mother said. “He would come here every day and put on Tyler Perry. It was his business.”

But he also spent many years as an outpatient at the Kingsborough Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn, where he took cooking classes.

On November 10, 2021, Malcolm Boatwright left the family apartment to see friends. There, a woman called the police and accused him of inappropriately touching a 6-year-old boy.

Boatwright was slapped while handcuffed, although he vehemently denied touching the boy. He was formally arrested on November 11, 2021 and charged with sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

At the arraignment of the sexual assault charge, the judge ordered a special psychiatric evaluation to see if he was fit to stand trial. Boatwright landed at Rikers on 12 November. During a mandatory physical examination, he told the doctor that he was prescribed clonazepam and lithium.

This was not the first time that Boatwright had been in the infamous prison complex – he had been there twice before, in 2012 and 2013.

According to his mother, despite his mental health history, he was first placed in the general population rather than in a psychiatric hospital.

“He doesn’t belong there and they took advantage of him,” LaShawn Boatwright said. “They threw hot water, feces, urine at him. He, the prisoners, was deprived of shoes and clothes.

“I was told that they sent him back to prison so he could be assessed. This has never happened,” continued the mother of the detainee. “I’m trying to understand why it took so long to evaluate it? They just threw him there and threw him to be torn to pieces by the wolves.”

On November 13, Rikers’ medical staff decided to put Malcolm Boatwright on a dose reduction program to wean him off benzodiazepines, a process that would gradually reduce the dosage required by Correctional Medical Service policy to preserve the lives and safety of inmates with similar illnesses. dependencies.

“Who made this decision, how it was made, whether they contacted his previous healthcare provider, we don’t know,” said Bowwright family lawyer Gregory Watts.

At some point, Boatwright was transferred to the psychiatric observation unit at the Anna M. Cross Center on Rikers. He followed a gradual tapering regimen for 21 days, until 4 December.

Bowwright repeatedly told his mother that he was not feeling well.

“He said, ‘Mom, the corrections officer is rude to me. All I tell him is that I’m sick, I don’t feel well. All I kept saying was that I want to lie down, I want to lie down,” she quotes her son as saying.

Four days later, on December 8, Botwright went into convulsions that lasted several minutes.

“He started shaking and the staff at Rikers Island are watching,” Watts said. “Then they force the medical staff to find out what is going on. … He never had a seizure.

“I think they just screwed up,” he added. “Hey, listen, no one should die from a taper program.”

Medics took Boatwright to Bellevue Hospital, where he underwent a CT scan to determine the cause of the seizure. He told his mother that he thought he hit his head and lost consciousness.

The following day, while he was still at Bellevue, he again had a second severe seizure lasting several minutes, the suit alleges.

“The same symptoms – shaking, involuntary body movements. He’s on a gurney, grabbing onto the gurney… eyes closed, groaning. The medical staff is watching this,” Watts said.

Hannah Conn, a Bellevue physician, concluded in her case notes that since Boatwright had no previous history of seizures, his problems must have been caused by his withdrawal from the tapering program, as the lawsuit alleges.

Two more Bellevue doctors visited Boatwright and recorded no sign of a third attack. On December 10, he did not react shortly before 4 am. Bellevue doctors tried to resuscitate him, but he died at 5:36 am.

The city medical examiner determined that he died of natural causes – “complications of a non-traumatic convulsive disorder of unknown etiology”, that is, pathologists could not say what caused the fatal seizure.

“It bothered me — as they said, he died of natural causes, from a seizure,” the mother said. “These are not natural causes because he has never had a seizure in his life.”

Watts called the medical examiner’s conclusion about Boatwright’s natural death “strange”.

“How can this be a natural cause if someone dies of withdrawal symptoms and no history of seizures?” Watts wondered.

Julie Bolser, a spokeswoman for the ME office, did not respond to requests for comment.

The day after his death, the Department of Corrections released a statement calling Boatwright’s passing “a heartbreaking loss at the end of a very difficult year.”

Watts asked for Boatwright’s medical records. According to Watts, Bellevue handed over the unedited recordings in a relatively short amount of time, but the Correctional Health Service basically deleted the file.

“They gave me 490 pages of medical records, and they were all redacted,” said Watts, who plans to seek a judgment on the unedited records. “I said, ‘Hey, you can’t do that’… They brushed me off.”

Watts said that Wanda Roberts, director of medical records for Correctional Health Services, told him she was ordered to edit the records. “There was a conscious attempt to edit it while Bellevue wasn’t editing anything,” Watts said.

A CHS spokesperson said the agency follows state and federal regulations regarding patient information.

It was difficult for Lashawn Boatwright to get through the days and nights. She sleeps on a sofa in her living room next to a silver urn containing her son’s ashes.

“I have been sleeping on this couch for a year now. I never returned to my bed. To be next to him. I sleep right there, every day,” she said.

“I dream about him every day. It’s like he’s trying to tell me something and I can’t understand.”