Martinique Stoudemire, a former prisoner, recently settled her lawsuit with the Michigan Department of Corrections. While it may sound strange to hear about a prisoner suing the prison, it was due to certain events that took place during her time behind bars that led Stoudemire to sue the the prison warden and the doctors who had been charged with her care during her time as a prisoner. Sadly, MDOC gets sued hundreds of time each year by inmates and former inmates. Most of the lawsuits are ultimately found to be frivolous. But some of them, like Stoudemire’s, have merit.
MDOC Fails To Provide Suitable Treatment To Inmate
Stoudemire is a double amputee. She lost both of her legs after being committed to the Huron Valley Women’s Prison for her role in a number of armed robberies committed by her brother. She had significant health problems at the time of her incarceration and her health only declined after that. She suffered a heart attack, liver failure, a number of embolisms and also endured three amputation surgeries, two of them on the same leg.
As if this were not tragic enough, one of Stoudemire‘s amputations then developed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is highly contagious. As a result of this dangerous infection, she was quarantined by MDOC officials. Due to a lack of suitable quarantine locations at the prison, Stoudemire was placed in isolation in one of the segregation cells usually reserved for prisoners being punished for poor behavior.
While in isolation, Stoudemire says she was forced to change her own dressings, crawl to the toilet when she was able and sometimes defecate on the floor. She says that she was not given an alert button and instead had to shout when she needed help. She also says that she wasn’t given any handicap assisting devices and that she didn’t receive proper medical attention from the prison staff.
The lawsuit went to trial in March and April of this year after the Federal appeals court ruled that Stoudemire was allowed to bring suit against Susan Davis, the former warden at the Michigan women’s prison. Davis had argued that she was not made aware of Stoudemire’s situation by the medical staff. However, the Court of Appeals ruled that Davis admittedly knew about Stoudemire’s condition but put her “in the hole” regardless, and didn’t provide her with any assistive devices.
The settlement came right before the final arguments were to be heard in the federal civil rights suit. The state agreed to pay $200,000, although Chris Gautz, the spokesman for the MDOC, Michigan’s corrections department spokesman declined to comment on why the state had chosen to settle the suit instead of finishing the trial.