The final hours of the preliminary injunction hearing in Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes proved explosive. At the beginning of his testimony, as the hearing was closing, Dr. Paul Noel (Chief Medical Officer of PA Department of Corrections) stated on the stand that the affidavit filed in this case with his signature was not his testimony.
The Department of Corrections attorney Laura Neal knowingly offered false testimony. This information, paragraph 21, cited the erroneous information that hepatitus C viral load levels should determine treatment for Mr. Jamal. Laura Neal actually cited this misinformation in the brief she filed in court opposing the preliminary injunction.
Let me be clear. Dr. Noel testified that he informed Laura Neal of the DOC in September, in December, and again in the parking lot next to the courthouse, this morning that the affidavit was incorrect. The people in the court room and the judge were in shock. It was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Laura Neal offered feeble excuses stating that the information was factually correct; to which Dr. Noel replied “but misleading and false in its conclusions”. Robert Boyle’s expert cross examination, which proceeded for the next hour, was searing.
In addition to the false paragraph number 21 inserted by the DOC into the affidavit, Robert Boyle got the good doctor to admit that paragraph 10 was also false. This paragraph stated that the only infectious disease specialist to examine Mumia, Dr. Ramon Gadea, ruled out Hepatitis C as a cause for Mumia’s extreme skin eruptions. In fact, the medical records of the September 9th meeting with Mumia and Gadea state that he believed Hepatitis C could be a secondary cause of the skin rash and that Hep C should be treated after ruling out a rheumatoid condition.
The document they were trying to hide
Dr. Noel’s testimony highlights: “The Interim Hepatitis C protocol for New Anti Viral Treatment” revealed at the hearing yesterday, now public, thanks in part to Prison Radio’s and Austin Nolen’s Right to Know Request filed yesterday within minutes of its production in court, was revealing. Only five patients are being treated for acute Hep C beginning Fall, 2015. No one has been treated while the protocol was being developed for the last 22 months. Ten thousand inmates have active Hep C, and of that number, it can be expected that over a thousand have chronic active Hep c and liver fibrosis or cirrhosis.
Dr. Noel testified that Mumia has a 63% chance of having cirrhosis. He has significant fibrosis (scarring of the liver). He has “anemia of chronic disease”, and low blood platelets in addition to the severe extra hepatic skin condition.
Boyle:” Isn’t it clear that Mumia Abu-Jamal should get treatment?”
Dr. Noel: “It is anything but clear.”
The bottom line, they are only treating a fraction of cases, and those are extreme. People are simply dying as they wait. For instance, the protocol to get “consideration for treatment for Hep C” is an “EDG”, an endoscopy of the throat.
And they are only treating inmates who have the immediate risk of blood vessels bursting in their throats. Esophageal varices with a raised portal pressure, which the DOC considers proof of cirrossis and patients sick enough to treat for Hep C.
Dr. Cowan, DOC expert in the morning court session, was adeptly cross examined by Robert Boyle, Mumia’s co counsel with Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center.
Dr. Cowan had been insisting that the standard of care in the correctional setting was the same as the community setting, with one caveat, “risk stratification”. The most revealing and determinate fact was the last question posed by Boyle. “If you were in private practice and you had a patient with significant chance of fibrosis, would you treat that patient with the new anti-viral direct acting drugs?” (The cure). Dr. Cowan stated, “if they could pay $90 thousand for the treatment”
That statement alone could result in a ruling from Judge Robert Mariani ordering the DOC to provide immediate anti- viral direct acting drugs to Mumia. There has to be a valid medical reason for denying care. And it seems that DOC deliberate indifference to inmates’ health and Mumia’s life specifically has been well established.
The court will provide transcripts in three weeks, with final briefs due in six weeks. We will keep you posted.
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