Mom held for unpaid traffic tickets dies in Tarrant Co. jail

Source: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

Tarrant County Jail inmate dies days after complaining about an untreated infection
By ANTHONY SPANGLER aspangler@star-telegram.com

FORT WORTH — Calling from a Tarrant County Jail phone in early June, Adrienne Lemons chatted with her 3-year-old son, Chase, and told her ex-husband in Louisiana that she was not getting antibiotics for an infection.

The Dallas woman, 35, was in jail because of unpaid traffic tickets. Ten days after being booked, she was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital, where she died within hours.

Lemons’ relatives said Wednesday that they still don’t know why she didn’t get medical help sooner.

"It is a tragic thing that my sister goes in for some traffic tickets and comes out dead," said her brother Shannon Woodrome, 37, of Little Elm. "I can see an infection killing someone in the 1600s or the 1700s, but that shouldn’t happen today."



Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/708436.html

shouldn't happen either. That's what happens when you live in a vengeance based culture. The whole thing is just tragic. No wonder people feel they aren't worth anything.

Because she couldn't pay the fines. (Plus the gross negligence involved - I hope the family is able to retain a good attorney over this.)

in this kinds of cases against law enforcement or a government agency. The officials have qualified immunity against negligence claims and the bar is very high to prove "deliberate indifference" to the violation of a constitutional right in a 1983 (civil rights) case. That is not to say that her family can't sue, but we shouldn't ever assume in these kinds of cases that there is always a big settlement.

then I would imagine this would never get to a trial.

I bet the municipal self-insurance pools are sweating bullets with all the abuse we've seen lately.

Government actors have qualified immunity for negligence on the job. You can sue the individual employees for negligence but most government insurance isn't required to indemnify and generally the individual officers have no assets anyway. Cases against the government don't "settle" with the regularity that private torts do. The concern for the plaintiffs won't be a trial, it will be getting past summary judgment in front of an ultraconservative federal judge who concludes there that wasn't a showing of reckless indifference to a constitutional right on the part of the county.

The table is tilted against you before you even try.

'cause Saddam was a bad man is no big thing and certainly nothing to be bothered by? :D

It costs upwards of thirty grand a year to keep someone in custody. How long were the taxpayers going to pay to hold her in a place where she can't raise any money?

INSANITY.

The prison-industrial complex is profiteering off misery.

And if you don't pay your registration on time...you get shot. Just about anyway.

The state i was registered in didn't issue front license plates so i pleaded not-guilty.


The ticketing state lost my plea.


As a direct result of their malfeasance I was arrested three separate times and each time spent mid three figures to pay the fines.


I was so pissed at the time that i stated calling the state government 800 numbers all the time.


At last count i had cost the states in question more than 10 grand in long distance.

What the hell? Why do we let our governments get away with this shit?

They don't bother catching the drugs heading north, but they sure as hell go after the money from the drugs as it flows south. Why? $$$ of course, they can get all sorts of new toys by doing that.

Cities see their populations as a cash cow, and enforce draconian laws that only serve to crush the poor further down than they already are. Of course, we don't see the rich scofflaws spending any time in jail. Remember the huge hoopla over Paris Hilton -- and how she got out early? And her infraction was a CRIMINAL case of driving under the influence.

But it's just part of the larger pattern. Governments serve their own ends, not the people.

Time for a change, indeed.

Going to jail for unpaid tickets is fairly far down on my list. We have bigger issues to address, like lack of national health / dental, care, Iraq, and others.

And I have PERSONAL experience with this exact same situation. I was homeless for a while and lived out of my car. Little money, surely none for insurance, inspection sticker and tags. So I received several tickets. And I got arrested in Tarrant County, spend 1 night in the Tarrant County Jail before being transferred to the Weatherford, Texas jail. Let me tell you, the TCJ is a paradise compared to Weatherford's. Try no shower or shave for week. Spend the entire time in the 20 x 40 holding cell with 15 other men. Didn't even get back to the regular cells.

Now to offset that, I did eat quite well in both jails, expect TCJ holding cells (baloney sandwiches there). And believe it or not, we actually got to talking and laughing so hard at one point, a FEMALE deputy came in and said (I swear to God on this):

"Be quiet. Y'all are having too much fun, you're in jail, you're not supposed to be having fun."

As far as I'm concerned the real injustice is MANDATORY liability insurance. THIS is what causes so many poor people going to jail over tickets. This is a scam pure and simple cooked lawyers, politicians and the insurance companies. We used to not have this crap, and Texans were no worse off.

Now having said all that did I learn my lesson? I sure as hell did, I made damn sure to never let any ticket go to a warrant ever again.

3-year old boy, and several heads should roll in the Tarrant County jail system.

Used to live there. This is unacceptable.

Money is not a deterent. Jail is.

Stop suing and start putting people in prison.

change the system. This county has ignored the problem at their jails forever. If there is a lawsuit they won't be able to.

And the woman's family does deserve some compensation.

"Money is not a deterrent. Jail is." That's why Ms. Lemons was jailed in the first place.


I say, what's good for the goose, is good for the gander!

for the rest of their pathetic lives!

The poster above who said she denied for a crime of poverty is absolutely correct.

Fucking parking tickets! Whenever there is a blizzard in my hometown, it's like a second Christmas for the cops, the towtruckers, and the repo boys. The average fine is $600, since it includes towing, storage, ticket for parking, AND whatever fines you might have owed already. They project the city makes about $600,000 every time snow emergency is declared!

And now somebody is DEAD because of this bullshit!

:grr:

To them she was just chattle.

Jailers are not involved in medical care. Inmates file requests for healthcare, called kites, which are processed by JPS staff members, who are responsible for distributing medications, Grisham said.

JPS officials, citing privacy laws, declined to say whether Lemons’ condition was known when she was booked into jail or if she was being administered any medications.

JPS came under harsh criticism in 2005 for failing to provide adequate medical care at Tarrant County jails. A Star-Telegram. investigation of healthcare conditions at the jails after 10 inmate deaths in 2005 revealed staffing shortages, inadequate supplies, broken and obsolete equipment, and patient records, including inmate requests for medical care, in tatters.

A consultant hired by the county found JPS responsible for many of the shortcomings. JPS responded by bolstering staffing and hiring a new medical director.

and NO ONE is on top of it. It's not that company or even TX. It's our infrastructure. :shrug:

final days. I hate them with the fire of a 1000 flaming suns.

because the pain was so bad - and they still would not help her.
Guess they believe in the death penalty for traffic infractions too.

Woman gets death penalty for parking tickets.

Maybe that would get some attention.

:sarcasm:

How many people have to die before the rest get it- these people are NOT here for our benefit.

when my husband cycled in and out of jail for untreated mental illness (instead of being hospitalized but that's a different topic.)

Do not allow any of your people to stay in jail if you can possibly help it. There may be medical staff on site but prisoners don't see them very much. It's Russian Roulette to allow anyone who needs medical care to stay in jail.

Please, please be careful out there.

I mean, how could her life have had any value?

We single and childless women have no value, and we get that message loud and clear every day of our lives.

NEED their parents and are completely dependent on them. That child will bear a SPECIAL loss, even more than a woman's parent, for example.

value to my loved ones. If I HAD no living family would I be valueless?

it's there to add to the tragic sense. Of course just about everyone is missed by some one when they go but it's simply more tragic when a little kid is left motherless.

people are left sisterless, or wife-less? Why is it not as tragic or important when people lose sisters or wives or friends, just because they didn't have children? Do you think they feel the loss any less or the person was any less important to others because you couldn't call her "mom?"

has just had his mother mysteriously disappear from his life. Any loss is painful, but the death of a parent for a young child causes lifelong scars.

childless friends and family that their lives aren't as important and their loss wouldn't be that important, then. Thanks for the enlightenment. :eyes:

It's not the value of the deceased person's life that's at issue. It's the fact that a child is less equipped to deal with the loss than an adult. Everybody is a victim so to speak when a loved one dies. But the child is the most innocent in life's terms, therefore it's the most tragic.

You are so missing the point

small child to lose a parent. I'm sure my siblings and my husband and my friends would be devastated if I were to die in such an awful manner. But acting as if it's the same kind of loss as losing a parent at the age of three is basically saying that small children have the same level of maturity and emotional development as adults. Come on, do you really think that?

I have a heightened sensitivity to the plight of the unwanted single adult woman and I will JOIN YOU in your fight to rub everybody else's nose in it at every opportunity.

Jesus. A woman died at the hands of her jailers and you've got your panties in a twist because the reporter just had to throw in that she's survived by her 3-year-old.

It came to my mind that a woman without a kid might have been able to afford her tickets.

Of course it's significant. When they award the damages the award will compensate for her loss, and a three year old has just suffered a huge loss.

Just a fleeting mention, they don't say where she lives or if she received any phone calls.

that there is a dependent involved. Of course, even the single and childless will have people who miss them, but they don't have anyone depending on them in the manner as a child. Hopefully, the surviving family will be able to support the child. The foster care system seems to be a dangerous crapshoot.

depending on them, believe it or not. They DO have lives once in awhile, you know.

gotta be offended by something don't you? never mind that 'Mom' may have been her job...may have been her life. And yes, it is more tragic when a parent is lost... my wife dies, i am devastated...my kids...scarred in a way much deeper than my loss...does that mean i don't love her? no...mean my kids love her more? no...but the relationship IS different and if you cannot see that then i weep for you...for that is a blindness that cannot be fixed.

sP

He would be representing the family of the woman.

And I will take the grinding poverty of Oliver Twist from the top to bottom insanity of 1984 (or modern Imperial Amerika, for that matter).

Not to worry, soon we Imperial Subjects of Amerika will have BOTH.

for the crime of poverty myself. i hope someone is held accountable in this case, but nothing will get this young woman's life back. it sucks.

I was given a tour of it back in the 70's. It reminded me of the brig in the hold of a ship. It was bugged too. The detective giving me the tour showed me where the listening devices were.

I know of someone who has been refused any prescribed medication their doctors want them to take. Their excuse is that they do not want narcotics in the jail.

I think that excuse is pretty lame. Pull the inmate out, watch them to make sure they are swallowing, do a common check to make sure it was actually swallowed and not hidden anywhere and move on.

There's a certain inhumanity involved when people who are jailed are refused their prescribed medical treatment.

I think people sometimes forget that while incarceration is punishment for their misdeeds, being jailed is also supposed to help rehabilitate people so when they return to society they can stay out of trouble. By taking away basic rights and treating these people like animals we are definitely setting them up to fail upon their return to public life.

Rp

early nineties. Well poor and irresponsible but mostly poor. And yes this is a true nightmare.

But the Republicans will say if she'd paid her traffic tickets she wouldn't have been in jail to begin with so it's her own fault.

And all eyes turn to the felons and traitors in the White House and in Congress.

But as Kay Bailey Hutchison would put it, Democrats commit crimes. Republicans commit technicalities.

And shame on all those Democratic "ladies" in Texas who voted for that bitch instead of Barbara Radnofsky.

Almost died in jail from Lyme's disease complicated with pneumonia because I was to sick to work, so the child support Nazi's decided I didn't deserve to live I guess. My disabled parents had to come up with the money so I could get out, and get medical treatment.

2 years later they are still hauling me into court. And I am still on antibiotics because I was denied treatment for so long the disease caused permanent damage. I actually had a guard LAUGH at me when I pleaded for medical treatment.

I wonder how many people die a year in the hands of authorities from totally treatable illness? And the meme is that 'prisoners' get better treatment than the general public. Bah! Only in America can you become a criminal for becoming sick. Not to mention going broke paying off incompetent doctors and lawyers trying to stay alive and out of jail.

Think there is a safety net? Think again. In most cases to get disability, you have to FAIL treatment before even being considered.

Our system needs an entire overhaul.

I live here - can tell you that it starts with not requiring that your judges have a background in law to sit on the bench.

Both Dallas and Ft. Worth (Dallas and Tarrant counties respectively) view ticket revenue as a vital part of their hiring budget. The Sherriff's department does not share records with Code Enforcement (parking tickets) who don't share with Constable who don't share with DPD or FWPD who don't share with State Troopers, so we end up with a mish mash of chains of authority when you try to chase down who is responsible in direct succession.

I think Dallas has lost something like 4 million dollars in revenue since installing red light cameras. They're only installed at "high traffic, high danger" intersections, but the fact of the matter is they're installed primarily in the ghetto or underserved neighborhoods, without a valid statistical tie to real traffic reports.

They were installed at high revenue intersections where local beat would sit and write tickets to people least able to afford to fight them. Well now those people make sure they are fully in the intersection before it turns red; they've just learned nuance, and the city can't nail them and revenue from those intersections has dropped.

How remarkably stupid, and yet we are installing even more of these and whining about budget problems. We have dragnets to round up parking ticket violators and jail them and we even have the best kick in the ass of all: if you go to court to fight your ticket and you prevail, you still have to go stand in line for two hours to pay your "dismissal fee", and if you don't do that the case remains open and is marked as a court no-show and instant warrant, even though you were there and you won your case.

Oh yeah it's fucked up here.

there were a few exposes a couple years back about the company that makes/sells them is raking in the dough after pimping the product to so many cities --- cities, most of which STILL haven't made back the "revenues" to cover the multi-million price tag...and there is still no evidence it made any intersections safer (the original selling point)

as for the story in the OP...it scares me...a lot

They're moving forward with installing more red light cameras while considering that the new budget shortfall means they may have to shut down the zoo for one day a week, and close the Dallas Aquarium altogether.

Oh what a world, what a world. . .

not only red-light, but also the facial-recognition technology

Free cameras? I'd be out there practicing for my Oscar.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.

Then I'd drop trou, bend over and let loose the winds of hell.

:eyes:

I guess Tarrant County isn't facing an over crowding issue like Dallas is. I'm not saying the medical care would have been better, but the time spent in jail would have been less.

on edit: Nevermind. As crim son pointed out, she was driving with a suspended license. You can sit that one out. You have to wait for your court day in jail if you can't make bond.

I remember once, during residency, the patient was very, very ill, and Hubby had to fight to keep him in the hospital where he belonged. Ever after, he's taken on anyone he's been able to and tried to give them thorough care, assuming that they've been neglected in the jail. He wouldn't be surprised by this story at all, from what he's seen and told me about.

messages every day, in various formats, that they killed their sister and the mother of a little boy over some fucking traffic tickets.

But knowing how group-think works, I doubt any of them will take any responsibility for what they've done.

The FWPD dos not administer the jail. The Tarrant Count Sheriff's Office does. http://www.tarrantcounty.com/esheriff/site/default.asp

If you're outraged by this, contact them and let them know just how you feel.

In our local county jail, the inmates have to PAY to see a nurse who decides whether they need to see a doctor. And if they don't have any money, they don't get any medical care. So this woman would have died in our jail for sure.

I suppose it's even more like a concentration camp than I thought it was.

Why are so many humans complete and total monsters? I hate this fucking species - sometimes I think I'm being ethnocentric and it's just Americans who are such monsters, but then I go and read another Holocaust survivor account or some stuff about the witch hunts or just stuff like what European peasants thought of as entertainment at their festivals, and I realize that no, humans just really really really really suck and are the most evil mofos to walk this poor pitiful planet.

I latched on to this theory to help me explain it, although now I'm not so sure about the scientific validity of it (which actually does help me understand some about ignorance and attachment to illogical beliefs) but damn, I totally get why Dabrowski said that the majority of humans are actually anti-human.

http://members.shaw.ca/positivedisintegration/levelIandII.htm

The message from the Bush administration to all law enforcement is America has been that mistreatment, even brutality, toward prisoners is acceptable. There has never been any chance that local police need fear the FBI or Justice dept under Bush.

So now we have these incidents that are happening all over. Tasing is SOP now. All it has to be is someone who verbally challenges the officer in any respect. It is now punishable by torture talking back to an abusive police officer.

starting with the damned jaywalkers

then the people who go the wrong way in the parking lot at the grocery store

then the ones who don't use their turn signals.

In jail you are cattle. Special needs are ignored. If you get arrested and have to spend any significant time there, I can only hope you are healthy and not requiring any of those "annoying" things like medication. If you do, consider yourself lucky if you get your meds within the first month of your stay.

MZr7

over traffic tickets.


Maybe after a trial, with a period to get things in order, arrange childcare, after discussing many other options to repay... and having looked at the facts of each ticket.... ok, maybe then someone could choose to go to jail over traffic tickets. Provided the trial had found genuine danger to society in the actions leading to the tickets... and not just a revenue producer for a city.

But that would just be in MY America... y'know, a civilized America. That's probably too much to dream of.

Well, who protects, or compensates the families of people who are wronged, or are being wronged by stupid, idiotic decisions to put someone in jail for unpaid debt?
..The legal system, the ruthless lawyers that is who.

Now, take this women..And let us suppose that she had access to a real smart, ruthless lawyer..Let us take a name..oh..John Edwards (working pro bono) for instance. Ok., Now, she is in jail for just one day .

Mr. Edwards representing Adrienne Lemons...gets out = she gets medical attention immediately
... No death....

That is what it is all about..our smartest, most ruthless, never stopping people against theirs..

Debtor prisons - and death.

Her untimely passing was an act assymetrical warfare.