Would David Williams Care About Fabian Avery?
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is reportedly contemplating appointing state senate president and infamous vicious bully David Williams to a judgeship - a traditional way of getting political rivals out of the way.
Somehow I doubt one of the considerations is how suspected or even convicted criminals are likely to fare at the hands of Williams - a man so lacking in human compassion he named Ritchie Farmer as his gubernatorial running mate.
Because in 2012 America, even the shortest prison sentence - or confinement while awaiting trial - is condemnation to torture, if not death.
Fabian Avery III was seventeen when he died.
And were it not for how he died, we might offer our condolences, maybe we’d say he was in prison anyway, but we probably would not be reading this story. There'd have been no one to write it.
You’re reading about his death because he was yet another victim of a prison system that is utterly broken and whose inmates are just about utterly forgotten.
If you have a strong stomach, here’s Fabian’s story as told by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
He died last year in solitary confinement. He died because the jail he was locked up in had only the services of a doctor and a nurse who allegedly failed to try to get any specialist professional help from anywhere else.
Three weeks ago, Melissa Harris-Perry did a great segment on prison reform - or rather the lack of it.Fabian was sick, very sick. He died of appendicitis and complications from a bowel obstruction, according to investigative documents compiled by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He first reported being ill on Feb. 24, 2011 and was given minimal attention. He complained of nausea, stomach pains, vomiting and lower back pains, as well as frequently vomiting and defecating on himself and failing to clean himself up – reportedly the reason he was placed in solitary. Jail staff allegedly did little to help get Avery the necessary care.
He had been arrested in December 2010 on armed robbery charges. He was transferred from the Fulton County jail in late February 2011 to alleviate overcrowding and placed in a small-town lockup at the Mize Street Municipal jail in the South Georgia town of Pelham.According to Casela and Ridgeway, Fabian Avery III weighed 153 pounds when he was transferred to Pelham. He was found dead nearly a month later — on the morning of March 18, 2011 — on a mattress on the floor of his 6-by-10-foot isolation cell. They write that his 6-foot-1-inch frame had shriveled to 108 pounds.
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