Jonathan Magbie's last hours

WaPo has yet another great editorial by Colbert King on the Magbie case. King undertook further investigation on the circumstances surrounding his death and talked to a couple of inmates who witnessed Jonathan's final hours. It is not a pretty story.

"Another inmate named Jason Foster and I were cleaning the floor around 11 or 11:30 at night when we noticed Jonathan was in his cell, and he was sweating. He could barely talk," said Darryl Carter in a phone call from the Youngstown, Ohio, jail where he is now assigned.

...Carter, a convicted felon, said he made sure Magbie got some water, then went to the nurse on duty, named "Binka," and told him that Magbie needed some help. "But Binka said, 'He's okay,' and never went to see him," Carter said. A little later, Carter said, "Jonathan was making some noise with his wheelchair, banging it into the door of his cell. . . . An officer named Singly wanted to lock Jonathan's cell door, but I told her, 'Don't do that because he can't push the button if he needs help.' " The officer locked the door anyway, Carter said, and he didn't see her check on Magbie anymore.

By the next morning, Magbie was so oxygen deprived he was hallucinating and hearing voices. Hours later he was dead.

Judge Retchin claims it was an unintended consequence of the sentencing but you would have to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to have foreseen this result since she was clearly warned beforehand, even by the DA himself, that the jail did not have the facilities to care for Magbie. Nonetheless she ignored the state's sentencing recommendation, threw out the plea bargain and essentially sentenced him to death for carrying a couple of grams of marijuana on his paralyzed person.

Even more tragic than Jonathan's death is that this woman is still on the bench, able to wreak further havoc on our justice system.