By Robert Wilonsky
Dallas News
DALLAS, Texas — Just weeks ago the Texas Observer branded the Jesse R. Dawson State Jail on the banks of the Trinity River near downtown Dallas as “Texas’ worst state jail,” citing, among other things, poor conditions and inadequate medical treatment that “in a few cases led to deaths.” Among them: Autumn Miller’s premature baby, a girl named Gracie born after just 26 weeks of gestation.
Autumn told KTVT-Channel 11 in July that guards at the privately operated jail, which is owned by Corrections Corporation of America, refused her cries for medical attention. She says the guards gave her a menstrual pad and locked her in a cell. She says they told her she just had to go to the bathroom.
As a result, Miller says in a lawsuit filed Friday in Dallas federal court, on June 14, 2012, “She looked down and watched, in horror, as she delivered baby Gracie into the toilet.” The infant lived for four days and died in her mother’s arms. “Within an hour of Gracie’s death,” says the suit, “CCA employees took Autumn back to Dawson.”
Autumn, who was sent to Dawson State Jail in February 2012 to serve one year for violating probation on a drug-possession charge, and her attorneys, Paula Sweeney of Dallas and Suzanne Kaplan of Austin, are claiming negligence and cruel and unusual punishment in the suit filed last week
Full story: Dawson State Jail inmate who gave birth to baby in toilet files suit alleging cruel and unusual punishment