News & Commentary
May 05, 2010
From the Field at the Board of Corrections Meeting - Understanding the Importance of Citizen Oversight
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May 04, 2010
Supreme Court Ruling Yesterday -- Doctors and Prisoner Death
Francisco Castaneda was a Salvadoran who died in February 2008 at the age of 36 after he was denied a biopsy for a lesion that developed on his penis while he was detained at an immigration detention facility in San Diego, CA. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Castaneda's estate may not sue the government physician who admitted in sworn testimony that she knew a biopsy was the only way to ascertain if Mr. Castaneda had cancer, and yet she did not arrange for a biopsy to happen. Mr. Castaneda is one of more than 100 immigrants who have died in United States detention. (The full ACLU press release is below.)
On any given day, there are thousands of immigrants in detention here in the United States. In Maine, immigrant detainees are held at the Cumberland County Jail. The latest court ruling appears to absolve doctors of the legal obligation to provide full medical care for those detainees, but it certainly does not absolve them of the moral and ethical obligation to treat their patients in the best way they know how.
The debate over doctors in the prison system is not over. Here in Maine, the Portland Phoenix's Lance Tapley wrote a thought-provoking article about doctors' complicit in solitary confinement at the prison. Just because something is legal doesn't make it moral or right.
Supreme Court Rules Government Doctors Not Individually Liable For Death Of Immigration Detainee -
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