Murdering Disabled Riker's Island Inmates: Ronald Spear

Ronald Spear, kidney patient, killed at Riker's Island - 

UPDATE July 21, 2014:  SETTLED for $2.75 million. The New York Times reports:
"New York City has agreed to pay $2.75 million to settle a lawsuit stemming from the December 2012 death of a prisoner at Rikers Island after he suffered what the city medical examiner’s office concluded was “blunt force trauma” to the head. The inmate, Ronald Spear, 52, had kidney problems and walked with a cane, according to the lawsuit. The medical examiner’s office ruled that the manner of death was homicide."

On the afternoon of Dec. 19, 2012, Nellie Kelly's phone rang. The caller identified himself as an inmate on Rikers Island, and told her he had some bad news about her brother, Ronald Spear. The inmate's name was Jesse James. He was 29, and had been awaiting trial since September in the jail known as the North Infirmary Command. James told Kelly that her brother was dead.

"He says, 'You don't know me, but I know your brother, I'm so sorry, they killed your brother today,'" Kelly tells the Voice.

Knowing that Ronald had serious heart and kidney ailments and had complained repeatedly about the quality of Rikers medical care, she said, "How? Was it the wrong medicine?"

"No," James replied. "They beat him to death."

Spear, 53, died at around 4 a.m. on Dec. 19, Correction officials say. The city medical examiner autopsy is still not completed, and the cause of death is currently listed as, "circumstances undetermined pending police investigation."

Some in the Correction Department have attributed Spear's death unofficially to some kind of medical disorder. The preliminary account is that Spear tried to leave the medical unit where he was housed, and when a guard stopped him, he struck the guard with his cane.

Correction staff then "restrained" him and he died as a result of his illness. Spear, the sources say, was a troublesome inmate who often refused dialysis treatment.

That account, however, flies in the face of what the Voice has learned over the past 10 days. For one thing, relatives of Spear and sources tell the Voice that autopsy photos appear to depict bruising on his face--suggesting some kind of serious physical altercation.

"There's a mark under his left eye, his ribs seemed to be protruding on his left side, and on his shoulder, you could see three marks, possibly bruises," Kelly says. "There don't appear to be any defensive wounds on his hands which mean to me he wasn't fighting anyone."

Last week, Correction Department spokesman Matthew Nerzig said the agency had "received no complaint involving this inmate from Legal Aid or elsewhere."
However, soon after Spear reached Rikers, he began having issues with his medical care. Instead of filing an inmate grievance, which he evidently did not believe would do any good, he complained repeatedly to Legal Aid's Prisoners Rights Project, which sent a series of emails to the Correction Department, sources said. (Medical care on Rikers is handled by a private contractor.)

On Sept. 26, PRP lawyers reported he was complaining that he had not been taken to dialysis for a week. A day later, he reported that doctor stopped his medications and threatened to take them away for good. On Nov. 20, PRP warned Correction officials that Spear needed frequent dialysis and medications. And on Dec. 18, one day before Spear died, PRP lawyers again begged the agency to intervene to get him his dialysis.

"Our office expressed repeated concerns about the adequacy of his medical care, and we have been informed that he suffered traumatic injury when struck by correction officers, injuries which post-autopsy photos appear to document," says Jonathan Chasan, a lawyer for the Prisoners Rights Project, declining further comment.

In November, one month before his death, Spear was angry enough about his medical treatment that, on his own, he filed a lawsuit in federal court. In the lawsuit, he alleges that a doctor Ramos and a nurse Bowen got angry when he refused to use the Rikers dialysis machine and stopped his medications "to force me to use the machine."

Spear demanded a court order returning his medications to "stop my pain and rid my body of excess water and maintain a normal blood pressure reading." "I am seeking $2 million because my blood is not cheap," he added.

Then, in a line that now could be tragically prophetic, he wrote, "Due to the fact that Dr. Ramos has stopped all my pain medications, he has caused me severe pain. And now that the Prisoners Rights Project is involved, I have correction officers retaliating against me."

Next event: DEATH BY VIOLENCE. Read the entire article at

Ronald Spear's Death At Rikers: A Host of Disturbing Questions Emerge
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/01/ronald_spears_d.php

My heart goes out to Ms. Kelley and her family. Spear's brother became my Facebook friend today despite CoIntelPro interference. The prison industrial complex apparently objects to their victims' families communicating with each other. My brother was secretly arrested and murdered in Memphis Shelby County Jail in 2003, and I have gotten nothing but lies, terrorism, and censorship ever since. See http://WrongfulDeathofLarryNeal.com . If you press for justice, Kelley family, you may also become CoIntelPro targets. If/when you do, continue to demand accountability. They kill and abuse white and Latino people in America, also, but when it becomes public knowledge, they pay damages before a lawsuit is even filed (i.e., Thomas Kelly's beating death and newspaper delivery women who were shot while police searched for Dorner). Black families like Spear's and Larry Neal's are expected to cower under oppression like the blacks did in the 1940s when crosses were burned in our yards after lynchings. Join me in saying, "I sign my own emancipation proclamation" (MLK). Take your crosses and shove them!