A judge is demanding the medical staff at Brooklyn’s troubled Metropolitan Detention Center explain in person why they didn’t give an inmate all his medication after an emergency appendectomy, then apparently lied about it to the man’s lawyers.
Brooklyn Federal Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall called for a hearing after she grilled a Bureau of Prisons attorney during a status conference last week, repeatedly asking who at the jail “lied” that detainee Jonathan Goulbourne was given all five days of his antibiotic regimen.
“At a certain point the MDC is going to have to understand that the judges of this court are no longer going to tolerate the mismanagement of the medical care of the defendants that are in their charge,” DeArcy Hall said at the May 1 proceeding.
“And so, it appears to me that our efforts up until this point haven’t been sufficient. And so, I’m going to try another route. Here we go.”
DeArcy Hall named a clinical director, a health administrator, a Bureau of Prisons lawyer and a correction lieutenant, demanding they all appear Wednesday in court to explain what went wrong.
“This is not an anomaly. I am tired of hearing the defendants that are held at the MDC are not being provided with the necessary medical treatment,” DeArcy Hall said.
The move by the judge is the latest in a series of frustrating responses from Brooklyn and Manhattan federal judges over the medical care at the Sunset Park jail, and the jail staff’s seeming unwillingness to respond to legal requests and judge’s orders.
“Despite the orders of numerous judges … for MDC to provide adequate medical care to defendants in their custody, MDC has failed to do so over and over, putting our clients at great risk,” Deirdre von Dornum of the Federal Defenders told the Daily News. “Judge DeArcy Hall now has made clear that she is going to find out why these failures continue.”
Goulbourne, 45, who’s awaiting sentencing for his role in a robbery and pot dealing ring, doubled over in his cell and started vomiting on April 14. When he told the correction officer on duty, he “was essentially told to stop complaining,” according to an April 30 motion from his lawyer, Noam Beale.
He was hospitalized hours later with a burst appendix. After emergency surgery, he returned to MDC on April 18 with a three-day Percocet prescription and a five-day antibiotics regimen.
Goulbourne couldn’t get his third day of Percocet, though, because the hospital still had his ID, and the official running the jail’s pill line wouldn’t dispense the narcotic without it, according to Beale. Then, on April 20, the jail went into lockdown — as it often does on weekends for staffing reasons.
On April 23, after the lockdown ended, he had a conversation with a nurse about the Percocet that jail staff interpreted as a threat, and was sent to the segregated housing unit — without his final two doses of antibiotics.
When his lawyers inquired, MDC legal staff responded, “The antibiotic medication was completed on 4/24/2024. Therefore, he would not have those in his possession at this time,” according to Beale.
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall (United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary)
When DeArcy Hall started asking, she got a different response, she said
“The message that was given to my chambers was: We’re looking for the medication because we don’t know where we put it when he was placed in the SHU,” DeArcy Hall told Bureau of Prisons lawyer Sophia Papapetru.
“Somebody’s lying, you see?” the judge said.
In one withering exchange, DeArcy Hall pressed Papapetru to admit Goulbourne had missed two doses, and that she was repeating bad info that the inmate was given all his medication.
“So who was it that lied to you?” the judge asked.
“The medical staff,” Papapetru responded, and the judge pushed back, “Which specific medical staff lied to you?”
DeArcy Hall then called for a 10-minute recess so Papapietrou could provide her with names.
Speaking to the Daily News on Sunday, Beale said, “Mr. Goulbourne appreciates the court’s concern for his health and well-being.”
Goulbourne’s treatment is the latest in a series of problems at the MDC. In 2019, the jail lost power for eight days in the dead of winter, and in 2021, defense attorneys highlighted complaints of no water or hot food, and grievously low staff levels.
In December, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Dora Irizarry blasted the jail for defying her order to send an inmate with a severe contagious infection to a medical facility, and in January, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Jesse Furman ruled that conditions there were so bad they constituted “extraordinary reasons” to not lock up a 70-year-old convicted drug dealer awaiting sentencing.
