Judge issues injunction against state over medical care at Fluvanna women's prison; ruling references at least 4 inmate deaths there since 2016

U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon issued an injunction against top officials of the department requiring that within 45 days the prison have an adequate staff of 78 nurses. And within 14 days, all of the prison’s buildings that house inmates must have a backboard or stretcher, an oxygen tank and mask, and a suction machine.

Also, within 30 days, the department must develop a protocol ensuring unimpeded access to medical care for inmates, taking into account a three-year delay for a colonoscopy experienced by one prisoner. It was later determined that the inmate had colon cancer.

Referring to the deaths of at least four inmates at the prison after the 2016 agreement was reached, Moon wrote Wednesday, “In sum, the medical treatment these women received was neither timely nor appropriate, and their deaths illustrate the danger of not having appropriate medical equipment on hand.”

The order stemmed from a contempt motion filed in 2017 by lawyers representing inmates at the prison. They alleged that the Department of Corrections failed to hold the contractor providing medical care at the prison — Armor Correctional Healthcare Inc. — accountable to provide an appropriate level of care established by the 2016 agreement.

“Over six years ago, women at FCCW filed this lawsuit, seeking a remedy for pervasive constitutionally deficient medical care. Their quest continues. Some women have died along the way. But this case has survived because defendants have upheld neither their Eighth Amendment obligations nor the settlement agreement they reached to effectuate those obligations,” Moon wrote.

Lawyers for the state have denied that the prison breached any of the provisions of the settlement agreement. The Virginia Attorney General’s Office referred requests for comments to the Department of Corrections.

Lisa Kinney, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, wrote in an email that “the court issued an injunction that clarifies some of the provisions of the settlement agreement.” She noted that although the plaintiffs requested that the department be held in contempt and pay millions of dollars in civil penalties, Moon did not impose either sanction.

According to Kinney, the department “has continued to work to provide appropriate medical care to inmates during the pendency of the lawsuit.”

The appropriate level of care was established in a 2016 consent order settling a class-action lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Justice Center, the law firm Wiley Rein LLP and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee challenging the constitutionality of the medical care provided to the 1,200 inmates at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

Moon did not hold the officials in contempt, citing technical reasons, but he ruled that he was going to enforce provisions of the 2016 agreement.

“Deanna Niece died on a prison cell floor at FCCW, days away from her release date. ... As she died, nurses ‘casually walk[ed]’ to Niece’s cell minutes after a correctional officer called in an emergency,” Moon wrote about one of the deaths.

Circumstances surrounding multiple deaths were reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch in a story last year and by other media.

The state argued that it was difficult to hire nurses and others to work at Fluvanna because of media coverage and bad publicity over health care at the prison.

Moon did not buy that contention, writing that “the bad publicity surrounding FCCW is defendants’ own fault, as it stems from FCCW’s original failures and the underlying lawsuit challenging them.”

Shannon Ellis, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Justice Center, said, “The state was willing to blame everyone else for their failures — the lawyers, the media, the settlement agreement, the compliance monitor, even the patients themselves.

“Today’s opinion flatly rejects the state’s attempts to point the finger elsewhere and confirms that the state has only itself to blame for the tragic state of healthcare at FCCW,” Ellis said in a statement Wednesday.