Death sentence
Did inmate Johnny Dunson get the medical treatment he needed?

By A.C. Thompson

As we go to press, 34-year-old Johnny Dunson lies in a coma in Bakersfield's Mercy Hospital, his brain partially consumed by meningitis brought on by a virulent fever, fluid draining from a shunt inserted into his cranium.

By the time you read this, the Oakland native may be dead.

Just how Dunson, an inmate at the infamously brutal Corcoran State Prison, ended up in this vegetative, near-death state isn't entirely clear. But the sketchy information that's emerged so far suggests the California Department of Corrections, which has been sued repeatedly for allegedly neglecting ailing prisoners, did the man few favors.

His family says he's suffering from coccidioidomycosis, or valley fever, a mysterious spore-borne disease that can often be tamed with hardcore antifungal medications if caught early enough. Dunson, however, may have received too little care, too late.

As far as health care goes, "Corcoran has the worst reputation in the entire California Department of Corrections," said Judy Greenspan, a longtime activist with the nonprofit group California Prison Focus. "It's notorious."

In fact, the facility remains under the supervision of federal Judge Thelton Henderson following a 2001 class action suit charging prison staff with "deliberate indifference" to the medical needs of inmates.

At first Dunson's condition didn't seem serious. His mother, Renee Morrison, an Oakland environmental activist, learned he was ill Sept. 29. The word came from another family member who'd received a phone call from Dunson, who is doing time for sexual assault.

Morrison said her son was vomiting and complaining about migraine headaches. "He'd been requesting medical attention for three months. He was having real bad headaches, migraine headaches," she recounted, claiming Dunson filed grievances with the prison over his lack of treatment.

When Dunson eventually saw a doc, Morrison said, "they gave him aspirin and sent him back with a prescription to get filled." Morrison said Dunson tried repeatedly to get the drugs, but prison staffers – for reasons unknown – never gave him the medication. "If he had gotten [the prescription] filled, it could've saved his brain from being eaten up by that fever."

Morrison may be right. Dr. Tom Larwood, a Bakersfield area expert on valley fever, says the disease, even in its severe incarnations, "is usually treatable" with a regimen of antifungal drugs. "The antifungal treatment is likely to cut down the course of the disease and its dissemination throughout the body."

But Larwood was also quick to note that valley fever often eludes detection. "It's one that can easily slip under the radar," he said.

Around Oct. 7, Dunson's family got a call from a fellow inmate: Dunson had passed out in a prison hallway and had been rushed to a private hospital.

At that point things got unsettlingly Kafkaesque. Morrison says she made "at least eight" phone calls trying to track down her son and find out what was ailing him. Citing medical confidentiality rules, tight-lipped prison officials refused to say a word about Dunson's condition or whereabouts, Morrison told the Bay Guardian. "I said, 'I want to know if he's living or dead. Can you tell me where he is?'" she recalled. Her pleas were fruitless. "Nobody called me back."

Prison reformers hear similar stories all the time. "Every month we get at least one phone call from family members desperate to find out information about their loved ones," said Cynthia Chandler, codirector of Justice Now, an Oakland organization that advocates on behalf of women prisoners.

Stonewalled by prison officials, Morrison took her case to the next level, contacting an aide for state senator Don Perata. The senator's office was able to pry loose some basic information, and on Oct. 18, Morrison finally arranged for Dunson's grandmother and wife to visit him, then handcuffed to a bed in Mercy Hospital, a Catholic-run institution. Prison staffers limited the visit to a single hour.

A week later, when Morrison drove to the hospital, she was shocked to find her son emerging from neurosurgery – "I said, 'Brain surgery? What the heck is happening?' " Apparently neither the prison nor the hospital bothered to tell Dunson's next of kin that he'd be undergoing a serious surgical procedure. "By this time he couldn't feed himself. He couldn't walk without assistance. And no one would tell us what was wrong," Morrison said.

She cornered a doctor, who told her Dunson had contracted valley fever and his prospects were grim at best. "He said he'd lost his memory and was in and out of consciousness," Morrison recalled.

Despite Dunson's precarious condition, he was shipped back to the penitentiary. In the waning days of November, Morrison learned her son's state had deteriorated dramatically – he'd suffered a stroke and had slipped into a coma – and he'd been ferried back to Mercy.

Morrison returned to the hospital, where, she claims, correctional officers tried to keep her from communicating with Mercy's medical staff. "The guards said, 'The doctors can't talk to you at all. If you have any questions, you ask them through us,' " she said.

Corrections department spokesperson Terry Thornton offered a different take on the situation. "Prison staff have been quite cooperative," Thornton said. "They weren't aware the family had all these concerns."

She wouldn't comment more specifically on Dunson's treatment but said Corcoran's medical staff "do an excellent job. They really care." The department, Thornton noted, had upped its annual health care spending to roughly $975 million, or nearly a fifth of its $5.3 billion total budget. "We're working very hard to provide quality health care."

That doesn't satisfy Morrison. With her son stuck in the nether realm between life and death, she finds herself both furious and bereft.

"Why couldn't a doctor have come and sat down with us at every stage of my son's treatment and told us what they've done and what they're going to do?" Morrison asked. "Why couldn't they treat him like a normal human being?"

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