The Bureau of Prisons is not commenting in light of the Brown lawsuit, and has not responded to a Seattle Weekly Freedom of Information request made in August, seeking documents from any investigation. But the U.S. Attorney's office in Seattle is attempting to have the lawsuit dismissed for lack of proof of any "deliberate indifference" to Brown's condition, which must be shown if the government is to be held liable. Brown family attorney Ford is challenging the motion, arguing the government's version of events is not backed by the record.
According to a detention center health screening form, filled out when Brown was booked May 9, she appeared normal, alert, and oriented. She was also depressed, and her prosthesis was causing some pain. Brown was given an antidepressant, acetaminophen, and simvastatin, which she apparently had been taking to control her cholesterol level.
Fred Leo Brown
Brown on a motorcycle in New York in 1968.
Related Content
More About
Inmate Bowler says Brown, housed in a cell next to hers, "just seemed to get worse and worse." Come Monday, she was too sick to make it to court. A medical record from that day states she was suffering from nausea and vomiting, but suggests the ailments began on Monday morning rather than over the weekend. The record notes that Brown "claims" she went to the bathroom "8–10 times since this morning."
A medical officer, with a clinic doctor's approval, concluded she was suffering from gastroenteritis, a stomach or intestinal inflammation. He gave her an injection of promethazine to control vomiting and prescribed loperamide capsules for diarrhea symptoms.
The record indicates a touch test was done on her abdomen. It concluded: "Tenderness on palpation (no)."
On Tuesday the still-ailing Brown made a brief appearance in court, seated in a wheelchair. A magistrate set over the detention hearing for the next day to determine if, once Brown arrived in Los Angeles, she might be released under certain conditions. That evening, around 7 p.m., Brown, weakened further, fell on her way to the shower, according to inmates. Bowler and another prisoner helped her to a stall, "even having to turn the water on for her because she was so weak from her pain," Bowler recalls.
The corrections officer, Priscilla Vaughn, denies she snubbed Brown prior to the shower. A Sept. 30 affidavit, presented by the government in its dismissal motion, gives no indication Brown fell at all. Vaughn merely saw Brown "hopping" along, and two inmates "helped guide" her to the shower, then back to her cell, Vaughn says. The officer says she knew Brown was sick—she had helped her get a clinic appointment the day before, she says—but did not speak with Brown after the visit.
Another inmate, Briana Waters, who in June would be sentenced to six years for her lookout role in the 2001 eco-terror arson of the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture, recalled in a statement that she had reported Brown's deterioration to Officer Vaughn that evening, and was told the clinic would be informed. Vaughn claims she contacted the medical department, and a technician said she would call another medical officer at home. Vaughn also claims she checked on Brown around 8:20 p.m. and found her sleeping. Later the technician dropped off two pink bismuth tablets to combat an upset stomach, telling Vaughn they weren't needed unless Brown woke up. Vaughn left the pills for her replacement officer and went home at 10 p.m., she says.
Meanwhile, inmate Bowler says she fed Brown some Maalox while another inmate supported Brown's head. They also gave her water and ibuprofen, Bowler says, to help her sleep. At 10 p.m., the prison was locked down.
Around midnight, inmates heard Brown intermittently pounding on her door. A graveyard-shift officer appeared, Waters recalls. She says she heard the officer telling Brown, "Why are you on the floor...Get off the floor...Wait until the morning...I can't open the door." Another inmate, Sharon Carter, being held on drug charges, heard similar words, she says. So did Bowler, but she says the officer sounded "caring and concerned," and did slip the pink bismuth under Brown's door, telling her to go back to bed. It's unclear whether Brown was able to get back into bed.
Sometime after 2 a.m. on Wednesday, May 14, Bowler was roused by a clamor outside her door. She got up and peered through a window. "The ambulance guys are here," Bowler recalls thinking, referring to SeaTac Fire Department paramedics outside her door, gathered around with their rubber gloves. They had been summoned to perform emergency resuscitation, to no avail. Brown, Bowler says, was "on the floor, with her eyes open, but clearly dead."
Nine days later, U.S. Attorney Tom O'Brien dropped all charges. "Defendant took ill with an apparent gastrointestinal bug on May 12," his office soberly reported in a dismissal notice. "Defendant received medical treatment for her illness while in federal custody during the morning of May 13," but "as a result of an undiagnosed perforated gastric ulcer, defendant died in custody."
Brown family attorney Ford still shakes his head at that comparatively mundane conclusion to a life so audacious. "If only Roxanne had been in her part of the world, rather than in Seattle," he says, "she might be alive today."
As for the investigation that led to her demise? "It's ongoing," says O'Brien's spokesperson, Thom Mrozek. "That's all I can tell you."
randerson@seattleweekly.com
