Do America’s Sick, Aging Inmates Deserve the Right to Die at Home?

Two photo albums embrace Bobby Hutt’s 48 years of life.

Black-and-white photos demonstrate him as a babe petting a hound, and as a moppy-haired boy playing basketball. The pages lead to young adults Bobby in a blue-blooded jumpsuit standing in a prison garden with two other inmates.

Hutt, who died from cancer four years ago shortly after he was granted medical liberation from prison, spent 30 years struggling with drug addiction, which repeatedly get him in any problems with the law.

His sister Melissa Dumont fought tears as she looked at the photos. Those she favors are an image of Bobby captured between his prison sentences, wearing a backwards baseball.

“That was Bobby, he always wore his hat like that, ” Dumont said.

A unrecognizable Bobby looks back from the following page: a skeletal mortal in a hospital couch. His eyes scarcely open, he controls a weak smile for the family members who came to say goodbye.

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Bobby Hutt’s sisters Janice Hull( left) and Lisa Dumont. It took more than a year of efforts to obtain his release from an Arizona prison on compassionate fields. Photo by Elizabeth Murray/ Free Press

Those final times would have been impossible without the fierce advocacy of Bobby’s sisters, who lobbied to deliver him back to Vermont from an out-of-state prison and then to get him home.

Dumont and Janice Hutt made hundreds of phone calls to navigate a complex and often unclear process while they say their friend wasted away. They can’t gues what would have happened if they hadn’t been fighting for him.

” He would have died in Arizona ,” Hutt said.

Vermont is one of 49 states to pass compassionate release legislation, which is a special dispensation for prisoners suffering from terminal or serious illness to die outside prison.

The need for such constitutions is likely to grow, as the nation’s aging prison population is in danger of chronic and terminal maladies that corrections officials and inpatient advocates say are more appropriately treated outside prison.

Typically, in Vermont, the population of inpatients who are 55 and older has increased in the past five years, even as the total number of prisoners has dropped.

Mary Price, general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums and their own nationals expert on compassionate release, says the U.S. as whole underuses compassionate liberation. She presents Vermont’s laws — officially worded medical furlough and medical parole — a B-minus or C-plus.

Thanks to Bobby’s sisters, he died comprising his mother’s hand.

But not all inmates get the chance to end their days close to loved ones.

Vermont presents two examples. While prison officials are supposed to initiate consideration of medical freeing when an inmate presents severe health issues, those rendering inmate health care have sometimes failed to recognize terminal illnesses.

That was likely the instance for Roger Brown of Windham Countywho was among about 270 Vermont prisoners sent to SCI-Camp Hill in Pennsylvania in June 2017. He died there in October.

“[ From] everything we’ve seen both from Roger and the witness, it seems to be obvious that he was ignored, ” said James Valente, the lawyer for Brown’s estate.

Valente said he is still accumulating indication, but no knowledge has already been been liberated publicly that shows otherwise.

Brown developed cancer while incarcerated, but it’s unclear whether he knew about it.

Brown’s diary chronicles months of illness, for which he was treated with ibuprofen, and was told his chronic ache was not a medical emergency. Weeks before he died, he could scarcely move from his bed.

” We were continually rebuffed and refused medical attention ,” wrote his cellmate Clifton Matthews, 67, who took over the log of Brown’s deterioration when he could no longer write.

“[ He was] told repeatedly it was all in his head, even at the degree he was able to no longer stand or sit up .”

Sending people out of state creates an extra stratum of issues when trying to identify who might qualify for medical furlough or medical parole, said Vermont Defender General

Matt Valerio, of Vermont’s Prisoner’s Rights Office, said are seeking to get information from SCI-Camp Hill was “a nightmare, ” since the prison contract stipulated that grievances are required to go across the Pennsylvania administration.

Valerio said he was unaware of the severity of Brown’s condition since its term of office never received any complaints or grievances.

Typically, he said, when the role hears an inmate is in that circumstance, the agency’s faculty begins to communicate with the inmate’s family and the Vermont Department of Corrections about options for release.

More than 200 out-of-state inpatients from Vermont have since moved to a prison in Mississippi.

RELATED: Why Vermont prisoners eligible for medical release often remain behind barrooms

‘You Felt Like You Had to Beg’

Bobby began noticing sorenes while was serving 10 to 15 times in an out-of-state prison for three counts of assault and burglary with a weapon.

He put in multiple sick slip-ups to be seen by a medical doctor and get an X-ray, his sisters say.

” Everybody ever accused him of med-seeking ,” Hutt said.

” You’re a drug addict, you’re med-seeking .”

Dumont said she continued to insist, in nearly monthly conversations with her friend, that he keep asking for an X-ray.

” It get so bad that he would end up crawling on the storey because he couldn’t stand ,” she said.

Bobby’s femur snapped underneath him while he was putting on his pants in November 2013 after months of receiving ibuprofen for pain management, but not much further treatment. That’s when Dumont and Hutt say they began their yearlong oppose to guarantee its brother’s return to Vermont and his eventual release.

In Vermont, government decisions about who is eligible for medical release is just made by prison staff and officials. “There hasnt” formal process for families to preach for the medically necessitated liberate of their loved ones. Inpatients can request consideration for freeing through sick steals, but are given no other options to advocate on their own behalf.

The sisters attained the thousands of telephone call trying to find someone who could help. Some people hung up on them.

They transmitted emails. A number travelled unanswered.

” You felt like you had to beg ,” Dumont said.

Lisa Menard , commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections. Photo by Glenn Russell/ Free Press

When firstly asked whether the Department of Corrections made information on medical freeing available to inmates’ households, Commissioner Lisa Menard said all policies be available on the agency’s website.

A review of “Friends and Families of a Person Incarcerated in a Vermont Correctional Facility, ” which is posted on the department’s website and was last updated in 2017, failed to index any the purpose of explaining medical liberate options.

The other uploaded record, a “Health Services Handbook, ” which was last updated in 2007, briefly defined by the three different types of medical furlough.

The section agrees: “If you have questions about your loved one’s health there are several steps to take.” But, rather than outlining actions that can be taken or rostering departments to contact, the Q& A that follows repeatedly instructs pertained family members to consult the inmate.

In a follow-up exchange, Menard said she was unaware that the financial resources referenced in her previous conversation with the Free Press were so out-of-date and confusing.

“That’s a good catch, ” Menard said. “I truly thought that there was more information in those, and that is unfortunate. We will establish those more accessible.”

Menard said the guidebooks were due for an update and she would like to bring inmates’ families into the process.

“We crave family members involved in these cases, we really truly do; and surely there is a requirement attain some more effort to make sure it’s easy and clear to identify areas how to do that, ” Menard said.

Bobby’s sisters say they eventually stimulated linked with Vermont’s out-of-state unit supervisor, who maintained them in the loop. That associate devoted them a leg up in their attempt to navigate the process.

Two months after receiving an advanced cancer diagnosis, Bobby was brought back to Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vermont. When his family went to visit, the health, athletic humankind they remembered had all but disappeared. Bobby could barely walk.

For their mother, visualizing his precondition was devastating.

” This damn near killed her ,” Janice Hutt said.” I imagine “shes lost” practically 60 pounds .”

After that, the sisters say Bobby Hutt didn’t want them to visit so much better. It was too pain physically, and he didn’t want them to see him so sick.

The family continued to work with the Vermont Corrections Department to coordinate an approved residency and medical coverage if he was released from detention. Dumont converted her living room into a bedroom where Bobby’s hospital bed was placed, and, in August, Bobby was finally liberated on medical furlough.

Two months later, Bobby was dead. But, home.

“For all that we went through, he died where he wanted to die, ” Dumont said.

This is a condensed and somewhat edited version of a story by Elizabeth Murray, a faculty columnist with the Burlington Free Press, as part of her 2018 John Jay Rural Justice Reporting Fellowship. The full version and sidebars are available here. A video interview with Hutt’s sister can be accessed here. Follow Murray on Twitter at @LizMurrayBF.

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