Beverly Monroe had been raised to be a proper southern lady. She had a masters degree in organic chemistry and a good job in the patent department of Philip Morris. Nonetheless, a jury wrongly convicted her of murdering the man she loved.

He had a grand name, Roger Zygmunt Comte de la Burde, and led a grand life, at least until he ended it with a bullet in March 1992. He had emigrated from Poland - that was for sure - and claimed noble birth, but that wasn’t so sure.

With a Ph.D. in chemistry, de la Burde worked for years at Philip Morris, inventing ways to improve tobacco processing; one invention reportedly saved the company $300 million. However, de la Burde and Philip Morris eventually parted ways over a patent dispute.

He also collected and sold works of art, although some were fakes, just counterfeits weathered on his roof to look old and authentic. Federal investigators had already begun making a case against de la Burde at the time he shot himself.

Men viewed him with suspicion and some considered him ruthless. Many women, though, found de la Burde irresistible. Beverly Monroe, who met him through their work at the tobacco company, continued to love him even though she knew that he had affairs with other women.

Somehow, de la Burde also found time for wheeling and dealing in land. He lived on a large estate near Richmond, Virginia.

Despite all his wealth, de la Burde was miserable. Some witnesses described him as obsessive, paranoid, and depressed. It didn’t help that federal agents were closing in on his art scam.

On March 4, 1992, Monroe had dinner with de la Burde but left at about 9:30 p.m., arriving at her home a half hour later. She spoke with her son and then drove to a local grocery store.

The next morning, she returned to de la Burde’s estate. She and the caretaker found de la Burde on the couch, dead, a pistol in his right hand.

 As a girl, Monroe had been taught to trust the police, but a Virginia State Police detective abused that trust. David Riley subjected her to coercive interrogations, telling her that she really had been present when de la Burde shot himself but that her mind had blanked it out.

According to Monroe, Riley pressured her into signing a statement that she had been present at de la Burde’s death by threatening to arrest her if she didn’t. She quoted Riley telling her that he had never lost a murder case, that he could twist her words so that no one would believe her, and that he could make her out to be “the biggest black widow spider of all time.”

Riley had an effective tactic. Even if he couldn’t intimidate a witness into falsely admitting a crime, he could bully the person into admitting some “fact” which might seem minor but which would be damaging in court.

In another case Riley investigated, there had been no evidence that the man Riley targeted had been near the murder scene at the time of the crime. However, with a combination of suggestion and intimidation, Riley got his suspect to admit he had been driving near the woman’s home at the time she was killed and had stopped to urinate by the side of the road.

But it hadn’t happened! It was Riley’s invention, a suggestion he pressured the suspect into believing.

Years later, after the detective had retired, Riley admitted to a reporter that, while interrogating the man, he had told him: “You probably had to relieve yourself - I didn’t use those words because men don’t use those words - but I said, ‘You probably stopped to relieve yourself on the side of the road.’”

The man had been convicted and years of appeals failed. However, the mounting evidence of innocence was so powerful that the governor granted a pardon. This past April, the Virginia legislature enacted a special law paying him almost 1.7 million dollars in compensation for the 32 years he spent in prison. That law specifically stated that “Virginia State Police Special Agent David Riley has a documented history of misconduct.”

In Beverly Monroe’s case, Riley’s intimidating tactics had devastating effects. Monroe had a good alibi: A time-stamped grocery store receipt showing that she had been miles away at the estimated time of de la Burde’s death. She even had a witness who had seen her at the store. However, her signed statement contradicted that evidence and placed her at the scene when de la Burde died. The change in her story also raised doubts about her honesty.

Riley’s coercive interrogation wasn’t the only misconduct in Monroe’s case. At trial, the prosecution called a woman who testified that Monroe had tried to buy a gun from her. That was a lie, but the prosecution didn’t disclose to Monroe’s lawyer that the woman had an incentive to lie. She had been charged with a firearms offense but, in return for her testimony, the prosecution agreed to drop the charge.

The prosecution withheld other information from the defense, but that misconduct did not come to light until years later. Monroe spent the meantime in prison.

She went through her savings and then sold her house to pay legal expenses. But Monroe still might be in prison if it weren’t for a tireless advocate, her daughter Kathryn.

Katie Monroe graduated from law school at George Mason University and focused on her mother’s case. She got other lawyers to volunteer to help, obtained documents through the state freedom of information act and worked on appeals. After the direct appeals failed, Monroe sought a writ of habeas corpus in state court, which denied it.

Monroe then went to federal district court, which did grant the writ. However, the state appealed.

In a long, thorough opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld the district court. After 11 years in prison, Monroe found freedom.

And her daughter Katie found her calling. She became executive director of the Rocky Mountain Innocence Project and is now executive director of Healing Justice, a new organization working to make the justice system better, so that wrongful convictions like her mother’s no longer occur.

 

 She was 27 when, in an instant, her future changed. Forever.

Abere Karibi-Ikiriko, whose parents are Nigerian, had been blessed with huge scientific talent and a winning personality. While earning a bachelor’s degree at a midwestern tech college, Abere also wrote for the student newspaper and became active in a group seeking to help Nigerian women. In 1999, Glamour Magazine named her one of the 10 outstanding undergraduate women in America.

After graduation, Abere worked at a pharmaceutical firm, saving money for a home. When she began medical school at Howard University, she found a house in nearby Capitol Heights, Maryland. It was affordable, but because of the high crime rate there, she also decided to buy a pistol.

In school, Abere earned a 4.0 grade point average. She also fell in love with another medical student, a Nigerian named Okechukwu Ohiri, nicknamed "Will."

For two years their relationship was both passionate and tumultuous. In July 2004 they broke up, then made up, then broke up again. She loved him, except when he forced her to have sex.

After the breakup Will couldn't let go. He kept sending her emails and letters. In one he wrote, "God knows that I'll give up anything just to experience all these passions with you again One Last Time."

Abere put a deadbolt lock on her door.

When the evening of January 15, 2005 began, Abere had many reasons to be happy. In her final year in medical school, she ranked at the top of her class. And she was about to go to Austria to attend a scientific conference.

At 7:00 p.m., Abere was downstairs in her home, in her nightgown, doing laundry to prepare for the trip. Then, Will arrived and urged that they resume the relationship. In anger, she refused.

Will went upstairs and got Abere’s gun. Returning, he ordered her to a couch and pulled up her nightgown.

When he put the pistol down she grabbed it. During the ensuing struggle for the gun, it discharged, fatally wounding him.

The Prince George's County police took her into custody and a detective, well practiced in intimidation, questioned her aggressively. Ignoring Abere's repeated requests for a lawyer, he persisted grilling her until she screamed and sobbed, asking "How could you live if you knew you killed somebody you loved?"

Because the detective had violated her Miranda rights, the judge did not allow the jury to see the videotape of that emotional interview. But the judge also would not allow the defense to introduce the emails and letters Will had written.

Those emails and letters would have contradicted the prosecution's argument that Abere shot Will because he had gone to prostitutes. They also would have revealed him to be a man obsessed.

After deliberating 4 hours, the jury found Abere guilty of second degree murder. The court sentenced her to 15 years in prison, with an additional 15 years suspended.

The Maryland Court of Appeals found that the judge should not have excluded Will's emails and letters, and ordered a new trial, but the judicial system can be agonizingly slow. While waiting in jail for the new trial, Abere tried to commit suicide.

In the second trial, the defense introduced Will’s letters and emails. While the jury deliberated, Abere had an emotional breakdown.

Paramedics took her to the hospital. She wasn't in the courtroom when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

The National Registry of Exonerations' website reports that Abere died 5 years later, in 2012.

Why did she die? Was it suicide? The Registry had no information and I searched the Internet without success. But I did find one thing, a poem Abere had written that is both poignant and prescient.

Abere’s poem, below, appeared in the Howard University student newspaper on January 23, 2004, almost exactly one year before the night that changed everything.

             Memory

   I will be a memory
   Unable to erase
   Yet you will have no trace
   Of the love you once had

   I will be the heart
   That you once broke
   From all the lies you spoke
   With no guilt in mind

   I will be the partner
   One you took for granted
   Seeing others you wanted
   Without any pride

   I will be the treasure
   That once was yours
   But took another course
   to deserving arms reside

   I will be a memory
   Its not so hard to see
   We were not meant to be
   Anything but a memory

          Abere Karibi-Ikiriko



Imagine You're Standing Trial for a Murder You Didn't Commit and Your Lawyer is Terrible

It happened to a mother and daughter.  One woman's lawyer acted crazy and the other failed to call an expert witness.

Their nightmare began mid–afternoon on Memorial Day 2011 when 45–year–old Elgerie Cash did something stupid.  Her friend, Donny Jones, was visiting her home in rural Georgia and she decided to show him her new Glock pistol.

But it accidentally discharged, making a hole in the wall.  She started to unload the pistol when Jones, who was drunk, grabbed it and said "It's not loaded now,"  Cash disagreed but Jones put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.  He should have listened.

When sheriff's deputies arrived, Cash's 19–year–old daughter, Jennifer Weathington, was holding Jones, cradling his bleeding head.  He died in the hospital a few hours later.

When a medical examiner conducted an autopsy he found no gunpowder residue around the wound and concluded that the gun had been at least 18 inches away from Jones' head.  That made suicide unlikely.

At the time of the autopsy, the doctor didn't know that crime scene technicians had overlooked a baseball cap Jones had been wearing.  Found later, the cap had a bullet hole and blood stains.

Nevertheless, the women had to stand trial.     The mother decided to retain a private attorney and paid him his fee up front.  Then, he withdrew from the case but wouldn't refund the money.

She found another lawyer who seemed to be a bargain.  She didn't know that the attorney, Thomas Ford, had a drinking problem and was going through a divorce.

So, she must have been surprised when, trying to tell Ford something during jury selection, he replied "Shut the fuck up, bitch!"

Ford used profanity so often during the trial jurors asked the judge to make him stop.  But he wasn't always noisy.  At times he appeared to be asleep.

At one point, Ford mockingly imitated the voice of a witness who had throat cancer.  The one thing he didn't do was call any witnesses.

Neither did Jennifer Weathington's lawyer, a public defender, even though he had retained a ballistics expert who wrote a favorable report.   The expert's testimony would have contradicted the theory that the gun had been a foot and a half from Jones' head, but the expert never took the stand.

Maybe Ford's antics had distracted the public defender.  Ford's performance climaxed during closing argument.  He put on Jones' baseball cap and pretended to summon him from the grave.

On October 25, 2013, the jury found both mother and daughter guilty on all counts.  The court sentenced each to life in prison.

The women got new lawyers, who convinced the court to grant a new trial. Forensic experts testified for the defense and, on May 1, 2019, the jury acquitted the women of all charges.  Their nightmare was over.

But what happened to the lawyer–from–hell?

Ford's behavior changed after his arrest on a DUI charge, resulting in his treatment for alcohol abuse.  The Georgia Supreme Court reprimanded him for his conduct at the trial, but allowed him to continue to practice law.

 

Blame bad lawyers and judges for taking a parent's worst nightmare and making it last 13 years.

Either destiny or the United States Army – or both – had brought Ashley and Albert Debelbot together.  She had grown up in Mississippi, enlisted, earned promotions to sergeant, and was serving in South Korea when she met her future husband.

Albert Debelbot came from Palau, a nation of 18,000 people spread among hundreds of small islands in the western Pacific.  He was not an American citizen, but joining the U.S. Army could provide a route to citizenship.  Albert enlisted and served a tour of duty in Iraq before being posted to South Korea.

There, Albert and Ashley met.  After their marriage, Albert received a transfer to Fort Benning, Georgia.  On May 29, 2008, at the base hospital, Ashley gave birth to a daughter, McKenzy.  Two days later, they took the baby home.

But within hours, the couple noticed a bump on McKenzy's forehead and took her back to the hospital, where she died.

Losing a child is nightmare enough but the situation quickly worse.  Based on an autopsy, a medical examiner concluded that the baby died from a blow to the head which could not have been accidental.  No one had been around McKenzy except her parents.  The  Columbus, Georgia police arrested both Ashley and Albert and charged them with murder.

 Although the couple stood trial together, they each had a separate lawyer, and the attorneys did not agree on trial strategy.  Ashley's lawyer wanted to retain an expert witness who could review the medical records and testify about the cause of death.  

Albert's lawyer disagreed.  He explained that had heard the medical examiner testify in other cases and saw "no need to question her credibility or her statements."

Ashley's lawyer decided to hire an expert anyway.  Two weeks before trial he found one, but the doctor was not available to testify on the trial date.  Her lawyer filed a motion to postpone the trial so that the expert to testify.  Albert's attorney opposed the requested postponement and the court denied it.

Albert's lawyer, who had been against retaining a medical expert, planned instead to present evidence that his client was of good character, a lazy and ineffective substitute for actually trying to  refute the prosecution's evidence.  When the attorney asked Albert to describe his military service, the prosecutor objected:  Irrelevant!  The judge sustained the objection.

But the defense lawyers' greatest bungle came at end of the trial, during the prosecutor's closing argument.  They remained silent when the prosecutor misstated the meaning of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

"You don't have to be ninety percent sure," the prosecutor told the jury.  "You don't have to be eighty percent sure.  You don't have to be fifty–one percent sure."

Even a second year law student should have been appalled by this gross misstatement.  But the two defense lawyers raised no objection.

The jury found both Ashley and Albert guilty of murder and each received a sentence of life imprisonment.  That was in 2009.

As the years passed, a number of organizations became involved.  They included the Georgia Public Defender Council, the local public defender, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, and some private law firms.  But they were fighting an agonizingly slow uphill battle.

At a hearing for a new trial, the new lawyers presented experts who had reviewed the medical records.  One doctor testified that before the baby's birth, blood clots had formed in her brain.  By blocking the flow of blood, the clots caused pressure to build, pushing against the skull, which was abnormally thin.

Another expert testified that "You can have really quite significant abnormalities of the brain and have a baby that really looks quite normal."

But despite the seemingly normal appearance, there had been subtle signs that something wasn't right.  A third expert explained that the baby had eaten far less than normal on her second day in the hospital, while her head circumference increased at a rate about 10 times greater than normal.

Unimpressed, the judge denied the motion for a new trial, stating that he did not find the experts credible.

While the Debelbots remained in prison, the defense team took the case all the way up to the Georgia Supreme Court    .  In 2019, that court issued a decision which was both encouraging and exasperating.

It was encouraging because the court criticized how the trial judge had rejected the expert testimony without bothering to explain what was wrong with it.  The decision was exasperating because the court merely sent the case back down to have the judge do a better job.

The justices explained that the "trial court's limited findings in the light of the voluminous testimony" did not allow them to do a meaningful review.  In theory, there is nothing wrong with remanding the case for a better analysis.  That's standard operating procedure when the trial court has screwed up.

But that meant more delay while the Develbots waited behind bars.  And the delay might have been avoided.  The justices had spotted the prosecutor's egregious misstatement to the jury and criticized it as "obviously wrong."  They also noted how easily it could prejudice the jury, particularly in this case, based on circumstantial evidence.

The justices also were astounded that the defense lawyers did not object:  "We cannot conceive of any good reason that a competent criminal defense attorney could have to fail to object to such an egregious misstatement of the law."

But instead of throwing out the convictions then and there, it sent the case back down to the trial judge for more analysis and explanation.  That only lengthened the Debelbots' ordeal.  Once more, the trial judge denied the motion for a new trial.

So, while the Debelbots remained in prison, their lawyers appealed.  This time, when the Georgia Supreme Court considered the case, the justices concluded that the Debelbots had received ineffective assistance of counsel:  "[W]e are convinced that the failure to object to the mischaracterization of reasonable doubt was uniquely harmful in this case."

So, the court vacated the Debelbots' convictions and remanded the case for a new trial.  But what about the reason the Georgia Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court for a better analysis of the expert testimony?  Well, it turns out that the justices didn't need it.

They did not even discuss the trial court's fresh analysis except for stating, in a footnote, that it need not be considered.  Maybe it was so mind-bogglingly bad the justices didn't want to fool with it.  In the footnote, they stated that "nothing in our opinion should be taken as an endorsement of the trial court's rulings on these matters.  In fact, members of this Court harbor serious reservations about the correctness of those rulings.  Nevertheless, we need not address them in this opinion, as they appear unlikely to be presented again in precisely the same way in the event of a new trial."

The Georgia Supreme Court issued this ruling on February 28, 2020, but the Debelbots remained in prison until July, when they were released on bond.  At first, it appeared that they would again have to go through the ordeal of trial.  However, in May 2021, a new prosecutor decided to drop the charges.

Afterwards, Ashley Debelbot said "I do not hold bitterness towards anyone."  However, her husband was not so cheerful.  He mentioned how a fellow soldier in Iraq had died "protecting the freedom we believe in." But, he added, "We came home and the same system that we went to war to protect would never protect us."

 

Charged With Murder For Allegedly Attempting to Terminate Her Own Pregnancy

Criminal defense lawyers sometimes joke that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.  A grand jury in a south Texas county did more than that:  It indicted a woman for a crime that did not exist.

The case began in early January of this year, when 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera (above right) went to a hospital, where she had a miscarriage.  Hospital staff, apparently based on something Herrera said, believed that she had tried to induce an abortion.  They called the Starr County sheriff.

The sheriff's office in turn called the district attorney, who submitted the case to a grand jury.  On March 30, nearly 3 months after Herrera had gone to the hospital, the grand jury issued an indictment charging her with murder.

The indictment alleged that Herrera "intentionally and knowingly cause[d] the death of an individual" by a "self-induced abortion."  However, the grand jury, or rather the prosecutor guiding it, must not have read the homicide statute very carefully.  It specifically states that it "does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is. . .conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child."

Herrera spent 2 nights in jail before being released on a $500,000 bond.  District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez (above left) later issued a statement that he would be filing a motion to dismiss the indictment:  "In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted."  He did.

Reportedly, Ramirez did write in a message to an acquaintance that he was sorry:  "I assure you, I never meant to hurt this young lady."

Considering the anti-abortion legislation which Texas recently enacted, it would seem logical to assume that prosecuting Herrera was part of that crusade. Some lawyers have called the indictment "gross negligence." 

Ramirez is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic county.  A local Republic politician believes that indicting Herrera simply was a mistake:  "I just think his office failed in doing their work."  The politician, Ross Barrera, added, "I would put my hand on the Bible and say this was not a political statement."

However, there are reasons to doubt that conclusion.  Starr County has many Hispanic voters who do favor Democrats, but they are also Catholic and tend to be against abortion.  Additionally, the district attorney's news release announcing that Herrera would not be prosecuted included the following:

Although with this dismissal Ms. Herrera will not face prosecution for this incident, it is clear to me that the events leading up to this indictment have taken a toll on Ms. Herrera and her family.  To ignore this fact would be shortsighted.

Note that the district attorney did not say that the arrest and indictment had taken a toll but rather that the events leading up to the indictment had taken a toll.   The district attorney's statement continued:
 

The issues surrounding the matter are clearly contentious, however, based on Texas law and the facts presented, it is not a criminal matter.

It is almost as if the district attorney was hinting that he would like to apologize for not prosecuting Herrera.  But he should apologize - publicly - to Herrera, for adding more pain to an already painful situation.

A Family In Crisis

 Herrera and her husband married in 2015, when she was 19.  They have two children and were expecting a third when her husband left her in early January 2022.  A week later she allegedly tried to terminate her pregnancy.

On the day Herrera was arrested her husband filed for divorce.  One of the assistant DAs in Ramirez' office is representing him in the divorce proceeding.

Texas law allows these prosecutors to have a civil practice on the side.  But it's fair to ask whether the prosecutor representing the husband had anything to do with the grand jury's decision to indict.  The timing smells fishy.

Game wardens have gone high tech, attaching surveillance cameras to trees to catch conservation law violators.  But in Tennessee, the conservation officers were hiding them in trees on private property, and without telling the property owners.  Telling them would spoil their plan.

Tennessee prohibits hunters from using bait to attract game.  If the conservation officers suspect someone is doing that on his farm, they want to sneak a camera onto the property and catch him in the act.

State law gives designated officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency the authority to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in the performance of their duties.  As long as they stay outdoors, away from buildings, they don't need a search warrant.

Thus, they don't have to explain to an independent official why they want to go on someone's property, or what they expect to find there.  They don't have to convince the official that they have good reasons for what they want to do.  They just do it.

Hunter Hollingsworth has a 92.5 acre farm, most of which is in Benton County, Tennessee.  At the entrance, he has posted a "no trespassing" sign on a chained gate.  He doesn't live on the farm but goes there to hunt, fish and camp, sometimes inviting friends along.

On one visit to the property in 2018, Hollingsworth found a camera attached high on a tree.  Several weeks later, half a dozen armed men, wearing bulletproof vests, showed up at his home.  It was early in the day, before Hollingsworth and his girlfriend, who lives with him, were fully dressed.

The agents arrested Hollingsworth on six counts of illegally hunting waterfowl, including by baiting.  They also charged him, and his girlfriend, with stealing the surveillance camera.

Hollingsworth denies that he broke the law, but he entered into a plea bargain to keep his girlfriend from being prosecuted.  He entered a guilty plea to one count of wildlife baiting, and all the other charges were dropped.

Later, Hollingsworth and a neighbor, Terry Rainwaters, sued the TWRA.  They obtained videos which conservation officers had made while they were on the private property.  The officers had shot some of that footage while hiding behind bushes and watching Hollingsworth hunt.

The TWRA raised the defense that its officers were acting on behalf of a federal agency, the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, but the plaintiffs countered that the officers were also enforcing state law.  The court implicitly rejected the defense.

The Fourth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution - prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures - does not help the property owners.  The amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" but an open field does not fit any of those categories.  It's not a person, house, paper, or effect, and the Supreme Court has held that there's no expectation of privacy in an open field.

Fortunately, the Tennessee State Constitution offers greater protection.  Article I, Section 7 protects the "right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions."  At least some farmland would seem to meet the definition of "possession," particularly if the owner did something to occupy it or exercise "dominion" over it.

Lawyers, who have great fun splitting hairs, can argue tirelessly about exactly what it means to "occupy" or "exercise dominion over" a piece of land.  The Tennessee Supreme Court has held, in effect, that "wild or waste lands" are not someone's "possessions" protected from unreasonable search, but other land is protected.

Along with local counsel, lawyers from the Institute for Justice, a non-profit civil rights law firm, represented Hollingsworth and Rainwaters in their suit against the TWRA.  These attorneys won an impressive victory.  They persuaded the court to hold that the statute granting TWRA officers access to private property was unconstitutional on its face, and they did so on a motion for summary judgment.

The court likened this law to a "general warrant," allowing government officers to conduct searches even when there is no evidence that a crime has been committed.  The Tennessee constitution condemns general warrants as "dangerous to liberty."

Although the TWRA may decide to appeal, the court's 35-page decision carefully discusses and applies the existing legal precedents.  For now, its holding that the statute was unconstitutional applies throughout the state.

One of the Institute for Justice's attorneys, Joshua Windham, said that the court's decision was "going to have a really huge impact on landowners in Tennessee."  Because of the court's ruling, Windham said, "Tennesseans can now rest easy knowing that they're secure from these sorts of intrusions on their land."

 

Photos: Institute for Justice

 

After officers arrested Wayne Bowker on a charge of drug possession, they took him to the detention facility in Carter County, Oklahoma.  During the intake procedure, he told the jailer that he was being treated for a number of serious medical conditions, including asthma, bipolar disorder and congestive heart failure.  He also told them he was taking prescription medications for those conditions.

Although the jail had a policy requiring that a licensed physician would provide the inmates with medical care, the jail didn't have one.  Instead, a nurse, Kimberlee Miller, worked at the jail 5 days a week.  If an inmate developed a medical problem when she wasn't there, jail staff were to contact her.

But they didn't like to do that because Miller did not have the sweetest disposition.  As one court noted, "Miller was known to yell at staff when contacted outside of work hours, a problem so pervasive that even the Sheriff was aware that officers were hesitant to contact Miller when off duty."

Court documents allege that, when contacted, Miller would not go to the jail but would try to make a health assessment by phone.  If jail staff didn't manage to get in touch with Miller, the court stated, "detention officers with no medical training were expected to rely on their 'common sense' to determine whether an inmate should be transferred to the emergency room."

Bowker had been in jail 2 weeks when he complained that his breathing was stopping at night and his hands and feet were swelling.  However, he had neither his medication nor the CPAP machine which had been prescribed to treat this condition.

It didn't require a nurse to see that Bowker's condition was serious, even life-threatening.  Bowker's cellmate wrote a note stating "we are afraid he is going to die on us."
 

However, according to court documents, the nurse did not even review Bowker's request until 2 days later.  She did not conduct a health assessment but did contact Bowker's mother, who brought the CPAP machine and Bowker's medicine to the jail.

But jail staff refused to accept this medicine.  The court noted that the jail "had a policy of refusing any medication that was not packaged in bubble packs.  If an inmate's family did not provide medication in this specific type of packaging, an inmate could only obtain medication through a visit to the emergency room, which resulted in a $100 transport fee deducted from the inmate's commissary account pursuant to a policy created by the Sheriff's office."

Jail records show that Bowker did not receive any medication for almost 2 months.  That wasn't atypical.  The jail nurse also took a long time to respond to other inmates' requests for medical treatment.

Bowker submitted a request for medical treatment stating that he had a broken toe and was having trouble balancing,  After waiting 6 days, he submitted another request, repeating that he was having trouble balancing, was experiencing dizzy spells and had fallen twice, injuring his back.  The nurse did not review this request for another 3 days.

Three times, Bowker was taken to the emergency room. The last time, the hospital's discharge instructions directed that he receive care from a neurologist and listed 3 medications he was supposed to continue taking.  However, the jail did not arrange for Bowker to see or a neurologist or receive further medical treatment.

Additionally, the jail only gave Bowker the prescribed medication for 2 days after his discharge from the hospital.  Then, jail staff stopped.  Why they stopped giving him the prescribed medication isn't clear, but without it Bowker deteriorated rapidly.

After a week without medication, he became catatonic, unable to speak coherently, and began defecating on himself.  Two days later, a guard found Bowker collapsed on the floor of his cell.

Bowker died at age 41.  The official cause of death was an enlarged heart, but an expert witness later testified that several different conditions, including encephalopathy, probably contrbuted.

The administator of Bowker's estate sued the sheriff and the nurse.  The trial court concluded that the doctrine of qualified immunity barred the lawsuit and dismissed it.  However, on March 14, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the district court and reinstated the suit.

Bowker was the third Carter County jail inmate to die within a 10-month period.  About 7 months earlier, a 44-year-old inmate had died of a pulmonary embolism.  Two months before that death, a 20-year-old inmate had committed suicide.

In an ironic twist, after Bowker died, the sheriff himself learned what it felt like to be jailed.  But the lesson didn't last long.

At the time Bowker died, state investigators already had received allegations of misconduct which shed some light on why the sheriff wasn't paying attention to conditions in his jail.  He had other things on his mind.

Agents of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation arrested Sheriff Milton Anthony on a charge of receiving a bribe, and booked him in his own jail.  The bribe did not involve money.  Rather, for almost a year, a woman employed by the sheriff's department provided sex to the sheriff and in return, the sheriff hired the woman's husband as a deputy.

The Oklahoma attorney general also charged the sheriff with sexual battery for – allegedly – fondling another female employee without her consent.

The charges could have landed Anthony in prison for a decade or more, but the prosecutor gave him a good deal.  Without admitting guilt, the sheriff entered an "Alford plea" – essentially a plea of "no contest" – to the bribery charge and the prosecutor dropped the sexual battery charge.  The court sentenced Anthony to 2 years unsupervised probation.  He also lost his certification to serve as a law enforcement officer and resigned as sheriff.

Anthony isn't the only Oklahoma sheriff who has gotten on the wrong side of the law.  An Oklahoma newspaper made a list.