Inmate Starved to Death in Kentucky, Prison Doctor Fired
An inmate starved to death in a Kentucky prison Jan. 16 of this year and now the prison's doctor has been fired and is being investigated for his medical oversights while working there. James Kenneth Embry, a 57-year-old inmate serving the last three years of a nine-year sentence, stopped taking his medication and refused many meals, but lead physician Steve Hiland did little to treat him.
The inmate starved to death after refusing 35 of his last 36 meals, the Associated Press reported. Embry's erratic behavior in Kentucky State Penitentiary began spring of 2013 when he stopped taking his anti-anxiety medication and started having suicidal thoughts. He even began harming himself, banging his head on cell door, and even though that got him moved to observation, no one decided to force-feed him to stop his hunger strike.
Prison staff "usually don't have to worry about it because they (the inmates) eventually give up," Hiland told investigators looking into Embry's death afterwards.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"It's just very, very, very disturbing," Greg Belzley, a Louisville, Ky.-based attorney who reviewed the documents surrounding the inmate's death, told the Associated Press. "How do you just watch a man starve to death?"
Embry's death also exposed gaps and problems in the prison's medical and care system. Medical staff there didn't check on him despite him losing 30 pounds in less than a year; they didn't communicate his conditions among each other; Embry was declared mentally fit by the prison psychologist despite admissions of paranoia, anxiety and intent to self-harm; his request to go back on his medication was denied as well.
When medical staffers eventually told Embry to start eating nine days before his death, the inmate said it had been too long and he could not. The day he died, medical staff suggested he be moved to the infirmary, but the request was denied by a registered nurse.
Hiland was fired, but the physician who has been sued over 100 times in his career, said he never saw Embry as a patient. Hiland claims he was on vacation when the prisoner died and believes the prison was trying to fill his $164,554-a-year position more cheaply.
"I never saw this guy, never met him," Hiland explained. "I was convinced it was a way to get rid of me. I was told I should have known about it."
Embry's officially listed cause of death was dehydration along with starvation and other medical issues.
