Sunday, December 8, 2013

METHADONE WITHDRAWAL IN JAIL




How to Sue for Methadone Denial in Jail

HOW TO SUE THE JAIL FOR DENYING METHADONE TREATMENT TO MAINTENANCE PATIENTS*

                       There seems to be an abundance of information available to support the effectiveness of methadone in the treatment of opioid addiction. The  US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health has compiled over  1000 publications detailing this subject. 

The following publication details the legal consequences of denying methadone to methadone maintenance patients in jail and addresses the Ethical Obligations to Ensure Access to Medication-Assisted Treatment in  Prison: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2366202/ 


Even the Office of Justice Programs, at Crime Solutions .Com, details the support of Methadone Maintenance Programs, see:   http://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=158  
There are very few lawsuits that have attacked jail policies denying methadone to Methadone Maintenance Patients. This is generally the result of several factors. First, attorneys are reluctant to take on theses type of cases because the financial gain would be minimal, if non existent. Secondly, inmates in jail usually are not knowledgeable enough to mount a good legal argument on their own and the time spent in jail is not sufficient to see results; in other words, once he/she is released from jail they soon forget the agony of their methadone withdrawal experience at the hands of their oppressors.
The following is an excellent article that addresses this issue, see: THE CASE FOR METHADONE MAINTENANCE TREATMENT IN PRISONS, researched and written by Rebecca Boucher. This article definitely provides an array of research to give someone wanting to sue the jail/county for denying them methadone and forcing withdrawal in their custody. See: http://www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/boucher_prison_methadone.pdf
Ms. Boucher's publication pointed me to the following 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision: Cudnik v. Kreiger, 392 F. Supp. 305 (1974);

This case set the stage for a successful complaint against a jail which denies methadone to a Methadone Maintenance Patient. The only problem is that this 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, in favor of methadone in jail,is that it is from 1974. Nobody has seemed to successfully challenged illegal jail policies, denying methadone, to in treatment. This blog is to assist someone willing to do so. I've done all the footwork so all that is needed is for someone to initiate a suit on their own, following the leads and examples provided in this blog.  
The following also addresses this issue: Legality of Denying Access to Medication Assisted Treatment In the Criminal Justice System; http://www.lac.org/doc_library/lac/publications/MAT_Report_FINAL_12-1-2011.pdf


See also: Forced methadone withdrawal in jails creates barrier to treatment in community, by Josiah D. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., at; http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/l-fmw032713.php


Here is a valuable sample letter written by a doctor showing his concern, see: http://ewestp.home.mindspring.com/filecab/deardoc.html




The scientific support of methadone use to treat opioid addiction is insurmountable. The problem arises with the legal system. There just is not enough case law to force institutions, including county jails, into providing methadone to opioid addicts, who desire an/or require such treatment.

Short an act of Congress or state legislation, the only way to bring this issue to light is to haul the county and the jail policy makers into federal court, calling them to account for their violations of its inmates civil right to receive Methadone Maintenance Treatment or continue it.

This can be accomplished through a complaint filed in the appropriate U.S. District Court (where the violation occurred), through the provisions of 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, which is as follows: 
 Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress ....

A person can file this lawsuit from the confines of a county jail or after release. Most states allow these law- suits to be filed up to 3 years after the violation of ones rights had occurred. The courts will allow one to proceed in forma pauperis, which mean the lawsuit can proceed at little or no cost. The trick is to show the court that the inmate has little or no money in his inmate account and that he/she has no outside assets. This is usually not a problem since most Methadone Maintenance Patients and inmates in jail live below the poverty line (a minority). This form must be used: http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/FormsAndFees/Forms/AO240.pdf


I am currently in litigation with Kent County, Michigan for the denial of my prescribed methadone for pain, while I was incarcerated in the Kent County Correctional Facility. I am not a lawyer and have made my share of mistakes early in this case but the case is still alive and I will carry it to the limits that the law will allow. There is a saying among prisoners that goes as follows: "The only way to beat them is with a pencil and paper!". In this case I have the computer and the internet at my disposal. I am attempting to get rulings in my favor so that there will be case law that others can use to win their cases and change the law. 



I have prepared a sample FORM to make it easy for someone to file a complaint against the Kent County Correctional Facility. One of these was filed today for someone who had to kick a 180mg. habit in jail. He asked for $500, 000 in compensatory damages and $1,000,000 in punitive damages. This form may be copied and/or edited for your own use.


UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
Plaintiff: ___________________________        Case Number:_______________________                                                                                                                   
                       (Your name)                                       (Completed by court)                                    
v.
KENT COUNTY and
Sheriff Lawrence Stelma;
The policy maker for the
Kent County Correctional Facility.
Defendants.
COMPLAINT FOR THE DENIAL OF METHADONE DUE TO THE PROHIBITIVE POLICY AT THE KENT COUNTY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY BY AND THROUGH KENT COUNTY AND ITS POLICY MAKER
SHERIFF LAWRENCE STELMA
STATEMENT OF FACTS
On _____________________, I was incarcerated in the Kent County Correctional Facility and released on ____________________.
I had been a Methadone Maintenance Patient at a state and federally approved and funded Opioid Treatment Program located in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I received methadone on a daily bases as a part of that integral Opioid Treatment Program; which was prescribed by the programs doctor, an expert in the field of addiction and licensed to prescribe methadone by both the State of Michigan and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in compliance with 42 Code of Federal Regulations § 8.
Against this backdrop, it is evident that opioid dependence is a serious medical condition with immediate and future risks. To deny previously prescribed methadone, whether by imposing detoxification or abrupt withdrawal, constitutes deliberate indifference.
A medical need is serious where a physician has diagnosed a condition as mandating treatment or if a lay person would easily recognize the necessity for a doctor’s attention.
Upon arrival to the Kent County Correctional Facility I was denied methadone; the medication I needed daily, as a result of the facility’s policy prohibiting its use. My medication was discontinued without the prescribing physician’s evaluation and order authorizing such discontinuation. Even if the jail’s doctor were to have authorized such discontinuation, he/she was not experience in the field of addictionology to realize the implications of such abrupt discontinuation of methadone.
The Kent County Correctional Facility’s prohibitive policy was the sole moving and causative factor denying my established methadone treatment causing me profound pain and prolonged suffering and violating my constitutionally protected rights.
I experienced a life threatening withdrawal due to not receiving my medication, which was physically harmful, and caused severe psychological trauma. This lasted in its acute phase for over one month and caused chronic symptoms throughout my incarceration and I still suffer from the trauma of the experience.
The Kent County Correctional Facility’s prohibitive policy resulted in deliberate indifference to my severe medical needs and placed my life in danger, which could have resulted in my death.
To deny and disregard my established, diagnosed opioid-dependence and previously prescribed methadone against my will further constituted deliberate indifference to my severe medical need and condition.
Denial of access to Medication Assisted Treatment at any level of the criminal justice system violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act where the denial is pursuant to a blanket policy prohibiting Medication Assisted Treatment or is denied without the required objective individualized evaluation to do so by the physician at the patients Opioid Treatment Program. The denial of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) pursuant to a policy prohibiting the use of any prescribed controlled substance also violates the ADA and Rehabilitation Act due to its disparate impact on opiate-addicted individuals receiving or in need of MAT or if the agency fails to grant MAT as a “reasonable accommodation.”
Addiction is a disability and I am disabled and the policy in question was discriminatory and prejudicial against me as a disabled American citizen and against my disability.
Kent County Correctional Facility’s prohibitive policy violated the United States Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” and/or the Fourteenth Amendment “due process” clause when they forced me, against my will, to detoxify without the provision of medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration for that use and/or the manufactures’ detailed cessation protocol for the drug; in this case, the withdrawal protocol dictated by the Opioid Treatment Program in which I participated.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has held that when a prison policy eliminates potential treatment options it becomes impossible to consider a full range of medical treatment. While the federal court acknowledged its proper deferential role to state prison authorities, it declared its superior function is to protect the constitutional rights of prisoners.
 A grant of deference may not be so broad so as to tread on the constitutional rights of prisoners. The court has rejected the jails’ security interest argument in denying methadone, suggesting that there were other means available to ensure jail security, including housing Methadone Maintenance Treatment recipients separately and allowing neighborhood clinic personnel to visit and administer the drug.
The court reasoned that because methadone is distributed in liquid form and must be consumed in the presence of the person administering the drug according to strict regulations, an in-house illicit market for methadone is “at best highly remote.”
The courts must evaluate penal measures against “broad and idealistic concepts of dignity, civilized standards, humanity, and decency.” The policy in question at the Kent County Correctional Facility fails miserably in this regard.
In 1976, the Supreme Court recognized the government’s obligation to provide medical care to prisoners. The Court reasoned that because the government restrains inmates’ liberty and thereby prohibits inmates from independently seeking medical care, the government must provide that care.
The Kent County Correctional Facility’s prohibitive policy deprived me of the Medication Assisted Treatment that I was entitled to and, as a pretrial detainee, violated my Fourteenth Amendment right to “due process” under the law, before discontinuing my MAT, ie. methadone; protected under the state and federal regulations relegating the discontinuation of methadone to the Opioid Treatment Program’s discretion and protocol, not to any protocol orchestrated by Kent County Policies or by Sheriff Stelma, the policy maker/enforcer for the Kent County Correctional Facility.
The Federal Guidelines for Opioid Treatment governing Medication Assisted Treatment Programs clearly addresses involuntary withdrawal from methadone under § O. Administrative Withdrawal and Discharge (authorized by 42 CFR § 8.12(e)(4)):
 A major goal for programs is to retain patients for as long as they can benefit from treatment and express a desire to continue it. Because retaining the patient is not always possible, programs provide procedures for administrative withdrawal that employ the principles involved in medically supervised withdrawal from medication. Administrative withdrawal is usually involuntary. When a program makes the decision administratively to discharge a patient from pharmacotherapy, the program offers a humane schedule of medically supervised withdrawal, using sound clinical judgment. A suggested medically supervised withdrawal schedule for administrative withdrawal is generally a minimum of 21 days, but the physician or mid-level practitioner, as appropriate, may adjust this time frame depending on clinical factors. The program documents the patient’s condition during medically supervised withdrawal in the patient’s record. On discharge, the program makes appropriate alternative referrals. Given the short time frame and poor prognosis for the withdrawal procedure, patient referral or transfer to a suitable alternative treatment program is the preferred alternative.
            Nothing in these Federal Guidelines or 42 Code of Federal Regulations § 8 deprives the Methadone Treatment Patient of the right to the above provision if a patient is incarcerated. Nothing in the Federal Guidelines or 42 Code Federal Regulations § 8 relegates the discontinuation of methadone to any other authority if the patient is incarcerated. Therefore I claim that I had a governmental induced liberty interest and expectation, as a participant of an Opioid Treatment Program, to be evaluated by the prescribing physician to determine if Medication Assisted Treatment should be discontinued and if so, how. I claim that the prohibitive policy at the Kent County Correctional Facility deprived me of that liberty interest and reasonable expectation, thus violated my constitutional rights.
In 1997, after reviewing 941 studies, the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Panel issued a landmark statement announcing that addiction to opioids is not an issue of willpower: opioid dependence is a medical, brain-related disorder to be treated like any other chronic medical illness.
Therefore the policy, further, denied my Fourteenth Amendment right to “equal protection” under the law.
The Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment also covers harm to one’s future health caused by a current condition in prison. When a prison official exposes a prisoner to a “sufficiently substantial ‘risk of serious damage to his future health,’” the Eighth Amendment is implicated.
The Eighth Amendment covers prison conditions that are sure or very likely to result in future harm. To cease treatment for opioid dependence, especially against the patient’s will, creates a substantial risk of future harm. A drug-free state is simply not medically achievable and sustainable for the majority of persons dependent on opioids, including those who attempt detoxification.
 For those whose treatment is halted against their will, it is a safe assumption that their chances of achieving and maintaining abstinence are even slimmer. For the majority of afflicted individuals, untreated opioid dependence results in relapse, causes increased mortality, and can attract another range of illnesses. Thus opioid dependence is a serious medical need in both the immediate and future sense, and the decision to discontinue and deprive me of my Methadone Maintenance Treatment subjected my future health to these dangers.
I have suffered permanent damage to my ongoing treatment for addiction and I have suffered further debilitating injuries, both physical and psychological, which will last for the rest of my life.
 As a convicted inmate the prohibitive policy, under the Eighth Amendment, imposed a condition that inflicted “cruel and unusual punishment” upon me during my incarceration.
Barry McCaffrey, former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has taken a strong stand on Methadone Maintenance Treatment and its role in prisons:
“Clearly, one of the most intractable of all drugs to deal with is heroin addiction. We have been willing to marshal the political will and resources to put people behind bars but we have not been able to marshal the political will and resources to provide treatment in prison and for halfway houses on release. We have a failed social policy, and we are going to have to correct it.”
The Kent County Correctional Facility’s prohibitive policy has denied me the evolving “contemporary standards of decency” which are guided by “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
The policy in question is antiquated and does not conform to federal law and violated my civil rights.
CLAIM TO RELIEF
I claim that compensatory damages in the amount of $_____________ is an “appropriate” form of relief.
I claim that punitive damages in the amount of $______________ is an “appropriate” form of relief.
I claim that declaratory relief is an “appropriate” form of relief.
At a minimum “nominal” damage are warranted and “appropriate”.
I claim any other “appropriate relief” that justice would so requires and allows.
Date Submitted: ___________________________
Plaintiff: _________________________________
Address: _______________________________
City: ___________________________________
State of Michigan _________________________
Zip Code: _______________________________
Phone No: ______________________________
Email: methadone.denied.in.jail@gmail.com


THIS SAMPLE LEGAL COMPLAINT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.




* Links can be cut and then pasted into the browsers address bar on your computer to access the referred to reference.(recommended)
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