ACLU near deal with state on inmate medical care

CARSON CITY -- An ACLU lawyer said Wednesday that inmate care at Ely State Prison will be improved dramatically under a coming settlement the group is reaching with the state.

Lee Rowland, the Northern Nevada coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union, said she cannot release details until the agreement is filed in federal court in Reno.

However, she said her organization would not have reached an agreement that did not bring "meaningful change." Representatives with the attorney general's office also declined comment until the settlement is filed.

As a prelude to the settlement, the state Board of Examiners agreed Tuesday to pay the ACLU $325,000 for legal expenses.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the state, including Gov. Jim Gibbons, in 2008 after the ACLU's doctor, William Noel, met with and studied the records of 35 Ely inmates.

He called the care for inmates "the most shocking and callous disregard for human life and human suffering that I have ever encountered in the medical profession."

The lawsuit contended that inmates such as former Coasters manager Patrick Cavanaugh, who died in 2006, allegedly suffered excruciating pain but were denied medications and needed surgeries by the prison's medical staff.

Noel said Cavanaugh was left to die a "slow, painful death" in which there was the "unmistakable smell of putrefying flesh."

Cavanaugh, 60, was an insulin-dependent diabetic who was not given medication in the last three years of his life and ended up with gangrene in his limbs.

Prison medical officials, however, contended Cavanaugh refused medications, and they made repeated unsuccessful attempts to reason with him.