When a former Rikers Island detainee sued the city for failing to give him proper medical care — causing waste to accumulate and leak from his body — his lawyer asked jail officials for their policy on when people behind bars with serious health conditions get sent to a hospital.
Nearly four years later, Lloyd Haynes and his attorney are still waiting for the response, court records show.
“I’m just trying to show it was clear negligence going on,” Haynes told THE CITY this week. “I waited for six months to go to the hospital. I should have seen a gastroenterologist right away.”
He believes city lawyers and Department of Correction officials are again stalling to avoid blame.
“They are just trying to play a technical game to hide their negligence,” Haynes argued.
The city’s Law Department, however, defends how it is handling the case, claiming it takes an average of five years for complaints filed in state court to be adjudicated. That’s in part because of a backlog created during the pandemic, according to Law Department spokesperson Nicholas Paolucci.
“There is nothing unusual about the pace of this litigation,” he added.
Meanwhile, Haynes, 44, suffers from Hirschsprung disease, a condition that affects the large intestine.
He wears an ileostomy bag over two holes in his abdomen since he was a kid. It’s similar to a colostomy bag and collects waste from the intestine.
It is a larger bag and only found in a few medical supply stores in New York City, according to Haynes.
When he got locked up in February 2018, medical staff at the jail refused to listen to him about what care he said he needed and insisted they could easily replace the bags when needed, according to his lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court in September 2020.
Instead, four days into his jail stint, Haynes’s bag began to overflow and leak fecal matter onto his stomach, THE CITY detailed in 2019.
Haynes, who grew up in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, said he was unable to sleep lying flat on his back because that would tip over the jammed pouch.
Days after THE CITY highlighted his plight, a judge ordered his release on medical parole, citing the coverage.
Life on the Line
Haynes had been in jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to stealing thousands of dollars from Santander Bank through fraudulent wire transfers.
Now, as his civil case slowly makes its way through the court system, he’s contemplating a high-risk intestinal operation to repair blockages in his stomach he contends were worsened due to his poor care in jail.
But he doesn’t want to go under the knife until there’s some resolution to the lawsuit, as he’s worried about the financial future of his partner and four kids.
“I’m terrified about my surgery,” he told THE CITY. “I’ve done multiple surgeries in my entire life. I mean never have I been told that I have a 50/50 chance of making it out alive.”
“All you do think about is your children and everything in your life,” he added.
As for his lawsuit, Haynes’ lawyer, Spencer Shapiro, earlier this year deposed Vanessa Williams, the assistant deputy warden of Rikers’ North Infirmary Command during his time behind bars.
Williams said she had no recollection of Haynes or his case during her deposition on Jan. 29. During the deposition, she revealed the existence of an internal Correction Department “command list” of detainees set to go to a hospital and the reason why they were being transferred.
But the DOC and Correctional Health Services, which oversees medical care on Rikers, has not turned over lists with Haynes name on it, court records show.
“The city is playing games,” Haynes charged.
Shapiro is also trying to depose the DOC’s grievance officer in charge of the former jail in Lower Manhattan known as The Tombs where Haynes was initially housed, according to legal records.
The DOC hasn’t revealed the woman’s full name.
During his time in jail, Haynes filed multiple grievances against the department with the woman he knew as Ms. Jackson.
“She was tired of going to the clinic asking them why I hadn’t been seen and sent to the hospital,” Haynes recalled. “She kept getting the runaround.”
Jackson then refused to accept any new complaints from him because they weren’t accomplishing anything, according to Haynes.
His lawyer is also seeking to depose multiple other medical staffers who were in charge when he was locked up.
The city has balked, arguing many no longer work for Correctional Health Services or are not legally obligated to be interviewed, court records show.
Haynes’ legal case has dragged on in part because he initially filed in federal court. But Naomi Buchwald, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York, in August 2020 ruled that there was no obvious sign of “deliberate indifference” by city staff.
The case was dismissed “without prejudice” which allowed Haynes to refile a similar complaint in state court.
He still struggles to understand why the federal complaint was tossed.
“They ran out of my supplies seven times,” Haynes said. “How is that not indifference? If that’s not clear negligence, what is?”
The Law Department has hired a private law firm that specializes in medical malpractice cases to defend the city against the state lawsuit.
The decision to contract out the case to the law firm of Heidell, Pittoni, Murphy & Bach, LLP was made internally by city lawyers, according to Paolucci.
Taking a Turn for the Worse
Haynes’ ongoing lawsuit comes as the city Correction Department continues to struggle to bring detainees to medical clinics, according to records posted last month by the city’s Board of Correction, which oversees the department.
The latest statistics are stark: detainees were not escorted by correction officers or produced at clinics for their scheduled appointments 32,281 times, or 36%, of all sick calls in 2023, according to the board’s latest report.
More recently, in June detainees were seen by a medical professional within the required 24 hours just 39% of the time, according to the report.
Comparative figures for prior years don’t exist because jail officials have repeatedly changed how they track the data.
The board recommended that DOC and Correctional Health Services revamp their sick call process to make it easier for detainees to seek and obtain medical care.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, in charge of DOC and CHS, has scoffed at making major changes. They contend that detainees frequently refuse to appear at scheduled visits.
In 2021, The Legal Aid Society, the city’s largest public defender organization, filed a class-action lawsuit against the DOC arguing that detainees were being denied basic medical care.
Last month, the group argued in court that the situation has actually gotten worse since the suit was filed.
Attorneys for Legal Aid urged the judge to hold DOC in contempt for failing to fix the problem and blaming detainees for missing scheduled visits.
The public defender groups want the judge overseeing the case to fine the department $250 for every missed visit.
