An effort to compel Connecticut’s Department of Correction to release an independent report on some of the worst medical malpractice and neglect cases that happened in its custody was halted after Gov. Ned Lamont’s office requested a provision calling for the release be removed from legislation as the General Assembly’s 2025 session drew to a close.

The report was commissioned by the Department of Correction in 2017 for $63,000 and completed within the year by the Criminal Justice Institute Inc., according to an article in the Hartford Courant. The report examined 25 cases that resulted in lawsuits or were considered likely to result in a lawsuit. 

A provision of the bill, a broad piece of legislation put forward by the legislature’s Judiciary Committee earlier this year, called for the Department of Correction to post the entire report online within a year of the bill’s passage. It also would have required the department to send any medical documentation the report collected that may have been pertinent in a medical malpractice case to the victim’s family. 

In addition, the legislation would have required the Department of Public Health to open an investigation into each case detailed in the report, and the commissioner would have been assigned to determine whether any physicians involved in the cases be disciplined for their actions. The report was expected to identify 25 medical personnel to be investigated by the Connecticut Department of Health. 

The provision was jettisoned from the legislation during negotiations between the two legislative chambers and the governor’s office. Other portions of the Judiciary Committee’s bill were rolled into the legislature’s sprawling budget bill, which passed both chambers earlier this week.

Rob Blanchard, a spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont’s Office, said the medical malpractice report was “commissioned by the Attorney General in preparation for litigation,” suggesting it needed to be kept confidential under attorney-client privilege. The Department of Correction also referred to attorney-client privilege in a statement to The Connecticut Mirror. 

Cara Passaro, chief of staff for the attorney general’s office, said while the office had “concerns” about making the report public, “it is not something that rose to the level of asking legislators to remove it.” 

Ken Krayeske, a civil rights attorney who has litigated multiple cases against the Department of Correction for medical malpractice, told CT Mirror in an email that Lamont’s request to keep the report confidential was “another example of Governor Lamont’s repeated failure on prison management and oversight.” 

Krayeske said in an interview that the release of the report would have represented a “victory over darkness.”

Cases against the department

The Department of Correction has been the subject of many lawsuits over the last 10 years regarding poor medical care that has led to the suffering and sometimes death of individuals in custody.

These include the case of Wayne World, whose skin cancer was repeatedly misdiagnosed by the Department of Correction, and who received a $1.3 million settlement from the state. It also includes Karon Nealy Jr., whose family received $1.65 million from the state after the 19-year-old died from lupus. Krayeske and current Correction Ombuds DeVaughn Ward were both involved in litigating the cases of World and Neely. 

Krayeske said he had been able to get access, through a federal lawsuit, to an additional 20 cases of inadequate medical care that occurred within the Department of Correction. 

One was the case of Billy Bennett, who died from cancer of the larynx in 2017. Krayeske said Bennett had begged for medical care for months. By the time he finally ended up in the emergency room, in January 2017, the cancer had reached stage four and Bennett had difficulty breathing because of a tumor in his throat. He died eleven months later. 

A second was the case of Patrick “Patsy” Camara, who complained of nosebleeds for months before finally being diagnosed with stage 4 nasopharyngeal carcinoma. By the time the cancer was discovered, a tumor located in his sinus cavity had grown to the size of a baseball and had eaten through his brain plate. He died in 2019. 

Documents reviewed by the CT Mirror show that the additional cases — individuals with cancer, neurological disorders, hepatitis C, fractures and spinal stenosis, among other things — revealed delays or denials of care, failures to pursue recommended follow-up care, inaccurate diagnoses, as well as “negligence” and “deliberate indifference” to patients’ conditions. 

The cases outlined in the report all occurred when the University of Connecticut Health Center, under UConn’s Correctional Managed Health Care, was responsible for the medical care of incarcerated people in the state. In 2016, a consultant was hired to conduct a review of the system, which had drawn a growing number of complaints about the quality of care people in custody were receiving. 

After two decades of a no-bid contract with UConn, the Department of Correction took over providing health care to incarcerated individuals beginning in July 2018. 

Krayeske said releasing the report, even now, many years after it was conducted, “would mean that we have, as a society, the confidence to own up to bad policy.”

“It’s important, in this age of the destruction of objective reality, for us to be able to say, as a government, ‘We made a poor choice. We hurt families, and we’re sorry,’” Krayeske added.

Ward said not having the report released would prevent families from being able to have closure, and to “seek justice in a meaningful way.” 

“I think it’s unfortunate for the individuals and for the families that were subjected to what has clearly been identified as horrible medical care,” he said. To allow the families of incarcerated people to sue the state for what their relatives had undergone would be “monumental,” Ward said.

As the legislative session reached its end, Ward said he had a reason to be hopeful because lawmakers had included sections in the budget bill granting his office greater oversight over medical care in the Department of Correction. This includes allowing the office to conduct investigations into any complaints around health care and to collect data on things like appointment wait times and access to medication and medical care. 

The bill also requires the Department of Correction to provide mental health assessments for incarcerated people when they first enter the department. 

“I hope, through all of that suffering that those individuals may have went through, we get some good policy,” said Ward.