Five staffers at Brooklyn’s troubled Metropolitan Detention Center federal jail will have to get their own private defense lawyers for a potentially explosive hearing about whether they lied about not giving an inmate all of his antibiotic medicine.
The hearing comes after Brooklyn Federal Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall put a Bureau of Prisons attorney on the hot seat earlier this month, grilling the lawyer on who “lied” about whether MDC inmate Jonathan Goulbourne received his entire antibiotic regimen.
The hearing was scheduled for Thursday, but the government asked for a delay after DeArcy Hall highlighted another problem: How can the jail’s staff members all be represented by the Department of Justice if they face criminal exposure, and if their interests and testimony may be in conflict with each other and with the BOP?
DeArcy Hall and other federal judges have long complained about conditions at the Sunset Park jail, where inmates and defense lawyers regularly describe perpetual lockdowns, lack of proper medical treatment, indifferent and cruel correction officers, maggot-infested meals and other problems.
After a bruising court conference on May 1 where she called the BOP to task over Goulbourne’s medical treatment, DeArcy Hall required five of the jail’s staff members to appear before her at an evidentiary hearing.
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall (United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary)
The staffers — assistant health services administrator Blake Glucksnis, clinical director Bruce Bailor, attorney Elizabeth Lynch, Lt. Stedman Ferguson, and registered nurse Marilyn Garcia — were being represented by the DOJ.
Goulbourne’s lawyer, Noam Biale, pointed out in a letter Sunday that Glucksnis and Lynch might have competing interests after it came out at the May 1 conference that Glucksnis provided “false information” to Lynch “concerning the provision of antibiotics to Mr. Goulbourne by the MDC medical staff.”
Still, during a phone conference Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dara Olds said she didn’t know of any conflicts of interest in the case.
“When the interest of those witnesses diverges from the interest of the MDC, we will make them aware of that,” Olds said.
But DeArcy Hall pushed back, and demanded that each of the five talk to an independent lawyer before they decide to waive any potential conflicts.
“They need to be advised, but not by you,” she said.
On Wednesday, with the hearing fast approaching, government lawyers asked for a delay, writing that “private counsel at the Department [of Justice’s] expense has been authorized, and [the DOJ] is currently obtaining and circulating a list of private attorneys for the individual witnesses to consider.”
Goulbourne’s appendix burst on April 14, and jail staff ignored him for several hours before sending him to a hospital, according to his lawyer. He returned to the hospital with prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics, but a weekend lockdown and a problem with a missing ID cut him off from his painkillers.
After the lockdown ended, Goulbourne was thrown into the jail’s segregated housing unit after an encounter with a nurse, and lost access to the last few doses of his antibiotic regimen.
When Goulbourne’s lawyer Noam Biale asked about the medication, he was told, falsely, that Goulbourne had taken all five days of the antibiotic. But when DeArcy Hall got involved, she got a different response — jail staff was still looking for the rest of his meds.
That led to the May 1 meeting, where DeArcy Hall grilled Bureau of Prisons lawyer Sophia Papapetru and made her admit that she got bad info about whether Goulbourne had gotten all his medicine.
“I have all the time in the world today. We’re going to take a 10-minute recess. I would like to know who was it on the medical staff that lied to you,” she said, after a tense back and forth.
After the recess, Papapetru gave up names, saying that Lynch, the MDC lawyer, got “false information” from Glucksnis, one of the health staffers, according to court documents.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Prison said the agency “does not comment on ongoing investigations or on matters pending before the court.”
Biale declined comment Wednesday.
