Mike Santos is a prisoner here at Lucasville. He might be dying.
Nobody cares, including the federal court hearing his civil rights action.
It started with chronic back pain in 2010, which then turned into back and stomach pain. He went from Trumbull to Mansfield to Lucasville, seeking medical help along the way– to no avail. His medical condition has progressively worsened. It now includes chronic anemia, constipation, acid reflux, anal bleeding, fissures, malnutrition, and an inability to digest food.
In short, something seriously wrong is happening in his digestive system, making it impossible for him to digest food. He has lost 22% of his body weight, more than four times the amount that a federal court has found to be grounds for a “cruel and unusual punishment” claim.
Mike has filed, by his count, 18 complaints related to his medical situation. He exhausted 12 of those complaints through the entire grievance process.
In all these years, he has never been referred to a specialist. The most that medical staff has done is to treat some of the symptoms of his illness– giving him pepcid, tucks pads, suppositories, and vitamins.
Mike, in an effort to get to the bottom of this on his own, even read “A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Digestive Health.” In it, he learned that someone suffering bleeding and chronic anemia like he is suffering should be given an upper endoscopy with biopsy to rule out celiac disease, which is an allergy to gluten. So far, no medical professional has so much as mentioned an upper endoscopy– and for good reason: gluten dominates the chow hall menu and commissary. If Mike has celiac disease and gets diagnosed, the ODRC would have to spend the resources to provide Mike the appropriate diet.
But, if he never gets a diagnosis, the prison system can avoid all of that.
In all of these years of no diagnosis and no treatment, Mike’s family has contacted Central Office, the State Medical Board, the Nursing Board of Ohio, and state representatives. No one has assisted in any way. Mike has attempted to retain counsel, but no attorney will represent him. Prisoner civil rights actions have been so limited in recent decades, and state attorneys are so aggressive in fighting civil rights claims, that no attorney wants to take prisoner cases. There’s simply no pay-out and they are almost impossible to win.
After years of stalling by prison officials and stonewalling by doctors, Mike filed a federal civil rights action on his own. He filed it in English, which is his second language– he comes from a Puerto Rican family where Spanish is spoken in the home. He filed the action on 23 June 2015 in the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division. But, because he filed it himself, there is a special “dismissal” process that actions filed by attorneys can bypass.
On 30 July 2015, Magistrate Judge Karen Litkovitz issued a decision of more than a dozen pages, largely in legalese, referring to a plethora of legal technicalities for dissecting everything Mike presented. For example, according to the magistrate, much of what Mike presented is barred by time limits– despite the fact that the whole history relates to ongoing problems that Mike couldn’t bring to court until after exhausting the grievance process. So, because prison officials stalled him, and because his illness continued progressing (requiring him to file yet more grievances that were stalled) the court now chops his claims off at the knees.
The court is now deliberating about whether to adopt the magistrate’s ruling and provide Ohio prison officials permission to let Mike waste away and die of an undiagnosed illness. In the meantime, Mike Santos, a scarecrow of skin over bones, walks slowly to the Lucasville chow hall where he receives a tray and sits, staring at food he cannot digest, wondering how long he has left.
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CALL AND EMAIL THE FEDERAL COURT!
Mike’s pending case is SANTOS V. MOHR. Call the federal court at (513) 564-7500 or email the court at office@ohsd.uscourts.gov and DEMAND that Judge Beckwith REJECT the opinion of Magistrate Litkovitz… DEMAND that the court NOT allow Mike Santos to die of medical neglect!
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The following are assholes who supposedly specialize in assisting prisoners but did nothing when Mike Santos begged them for help. Feel free to let them know what you think about their complicity in Mike Santos’ slow starvation:
David Singleton/Ohio Justice and Policy Center/215 East 9th St., Ste. 601
Cincinnati, OH 45202/(513) 421-1108
ACLU of Ohio/4506 Chester Avenue/Cleveland, OH 44103/(216) 472-2200/acluohio.org
Richard Swope/Swope and Swope/6480 East Main St., Ste. 102/Reynoldsburg, OH 43068/(614) 866-1492
Newman and Meeks/215 East 9th St., Ste. 650/Cincinnati, OH 45202/(513) 639-7000
Steve F. Huefner, Director/Moritz College of Law/255 Drinko Hall/55 West 12th Ave./Columbus, OH 43210-1391/(614) 292-6821
Donald Moore, Jr./Moore Law Firm/1060 Nimitzview Dr., Ste. 200/Cincinnati, OH 45230/(513) 232-2000
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The following is an oversight committee that won’t do shit to help Mike:
Joanna Saul, Director/Corrections Institution Inspection Committee/Riffe Center, 15th Floor/77 South High Street/Columbus, OH 43215/(614) 466-6649.
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