A Department of Corrections investigation into the death of an inmate in November 2017 is exempt from public release, a judge has ruled.
Timothy Adams died in November 2017 while incarcerated at Southern State Correctional Facility. He had been moved back to the Springfield prison after he had been held at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill, which the Vermont DOC contracted with to hold prisoners out of state.
Adams’ family had requested a copy of reports resulting from the department’s investigation into Adams’ death. But the department declined to release it, citing a statute that shields “peer review committee” records from release.
The peer review process is most commonly used by hospitals, allowing medical institutions to conduct rigorous internal investigations with the aim of correcting issues.
After reviewing the records in her chambers last month, Judge Helen Toor sided with the DOC that the two reports related to the peer review committee are shielded from release.
James Valente, the lawyer representing Adams’ estate, said the DOC’s refusal to release the report is in conflict with the department’s signals after Adams died.
“They want to have their cake and eat it too,” Valente said. “They want to tell everybody they’re doing this big investigation, but then they don’t want anybody to find out what the results are.”
Prisoners’ rights advocates raised concerns over the quality of care Adams received while in Pennsylvania before his death.
Adams died shortly after the death of Roger Brown, another inmate who had been held out of state, and who advocates say did not receive treatment for his cancer. One advocate said that Brown was “essentially tortured” by the Pennsylvania DOC.
Valente is also representing Brown’s estate in a lawsuit seeking the release of the Vermont DOC’s investigation into the circumstances of his death. That case is still pending.
The “peer review” standard is well-established and respected with hospitals, said Valente, who is familiar with it because of medical malpractice cases. But in this case — when the DOC had not been providing medical care to Adams, who had not even been held in a Vermont facility in the time leading up to his death — he questions the application of the statute.
“The problem in this case is that the Department of Corrections is not a hospital,” Valente said. “And they don’t provide their own health care — they hire companies to come in and provide health care in their facilities. And in this case, it wasn’t even their facility. They didn’t know a single brick in that building.”
“This was not a situation where that good public policy end could come out of a peer review meeting,” he said.
Valente has already gotten many documents from the DOC including health and prison records regarding both Adams and Brown. But those only offer a limited window into what happened. The DOC was in the best position to investigate and see the full picture of what happened in these situations, he said.
“Talking to the inmates, talking to the medical staff, talking to the prison guards,” Valente said, “and that gives them an incredible advantage in figuring out what really happened here.”
Finding out what happened that led to the deaths of Adams and Brown is particularly difficult because they died while in prison.
“If your client is dead, well, you have to piece everything together from third-party sources. And that’s particularly hard when everything happened in a secure facility,” he said. “It puts us in an impossible position.”
Valente and Adams’ family have not decided yet what their next course of action will be, including whether they will appeal the decision.
Corrections Commissioner Mike Touchette said the peer review process typically happens after there has been a death, and it gives DOC personnel a chance to scrutinize what happened with their care and how the system should be changed.
“That is an opportunity to look at the clinical processes, the care provided throughout that individual’s period of care and whether or not there’s opportunities from a larger operational perspective, or from a clinical perspective about new processes, procedures, or systems that need to be in place to improve overall health care for the system,” he said.
Touchette said there are similarities between Vermont’s prisons and a medical facility.
“In many ways, the Vermont Department of Corrections’ correctional facilities are operating hospitals, given the 24-hour nature of care,” Touchette said.
Though Touchette said he understands the frustration of family members of prisoners who have died, he stood by the DOC’s assertion that officials are abiding by policy in refusing to release the report.
“I can certainly empathize with wanting to have some closure and feeling like there’s a void of information there,” he said. “But we’re bound by the law as far as who we can share health information with.”
Valente raised concerns with how the process was handled. He said that the DOC did not notify the family members of either man when the internal investigations were complete, nor did the department warn them the reports wouldn’t be released. He found out through media reports that the DOC concluded the investigations.
“They just left everyone with the impression that they were being a responsible organization, trying to figure out what happened to these people that they were in charge of caring for,” Valente said.
