From the April 2009 Idaho Observer:

BOP denies compassionate release for woman made terminally ill in toxic federal prison;

Karla Fuller, a long time resident of Harpster, Idaho, was sent to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) after a drug related conviction in Wyoming. Her family attorney, Wesley W. Hoyt, reported:

"She was eligible for and partially completed an in-prison drug rehab program that would have earned her early release in February, 2009. Unfortunately, she had been assigned to USP Adelanto, a private prison located near Victorville, CA, where the groundwater table was contaminated by cancer-producing jet fuel from the now closed George USAF base. The cancer turned into astrocytoma, with a brain tumor on her spine at the base of her skull, putting her in a wheel chair and rendering her unable to concentrate; thus, she was unable to finish the class that would have guaranteed her early release."

Fuller has since been transferred to Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell near Fort Worth, Texas. She would had been eligible for work release last April 2, but is being denied because she is too sick to work.

"Now the calloused powers-that-be at the BOP, indifferent to human suffering, have turned their heads away so that they don’t have to vomit after seeing the agony they have wrought. Karla’s face turns black and her body goes into convulsive spasm every few minutes, with involuntary arm and leg movements that the staff at FMC Carswell say she is ‘faking,’" said former deputy prosecuting attorney Hoyt.

Hoyt also reported that Carswell is supposed to be a "…women’s health care facility but actually is a torture chamber for female inmates who have become sick while doing time in the federal prison system. The private prison industry is alive and well because it is feeding off the misery of the American people and the families of those incarcerated feel so much shame that most have abandoned their loved ones to be the victims of Nazi extermination camp style tactics."

In Karla’s case, Hoyt said, "Just since November, 2008, Karla has lost two years of her life expectancy—thanks to the deliberate denial of timely medical treatment in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons."

Hoyt believes that W. Ellen Chapman, warden at FMC Carswell, has facilitated the deaths of many federally-imprisoned women sent to her institution who have no one to advocate for them on the outside.

The BOP is keenly aware of toxicity problems at Adelanto. There are no longer any female prisoners at Adelanto because they were moved out a few years ago due to the high incidence of various cancers among the women inmates.

Both women and men who become seriously ill while in BOP custody are transferred to prisons allegedly commissioned and equipped to provide necessary medical care. Hoyt makes serious charges regarding the medical treatment federal prisoners are receiving. "When medication or medical treatment is required, payment is received by the facility. Yet, when that medical treatment is denied, the owners of the private prisons pocket that money as profits. Taken over a large population of inmates, that amounts to millions of dollars of graft and corruption at the expense of the suffering of Americans."

Hoyt, in the family’s second request for a compassionate release, which was just denied by the BOP, points out to this warden: "In your response to the first Request for Compassionate Release, it stated that Karla ‘faked spasms and seizures.’ This is a bold face lie and you know it. But, you lied about this in your response just so you could fraudulently deny Karla’s request for compassionate release."

Hoyt added that "It is outrageous and unconscionable that the BOP did not release Karla as requested in December, 2008, for the reason that you, Warden Chapman, knew or should have known that Karla’s diagnosis was terminal (from her medical records provided by Dr. Patricio Reyes, Clinical Director, Phoenix, AZ - November 2008). At that time Karla had 2 to 2-1/2 years to live. Now she has only 6 months to live.

"These medical records," Hoyt continued, "coupled with the records of Dr. Bibas Reddy of the Center for Cancer, Fort Worth, Texas, all prove that Karla meets the test for a compassionate release. The fact that you, in the face of these absolute proofs of terminal condition, denied compassionate release by stating you lacked medical information and that her condition was terminal shows your complete callousness and complete dedication to deception. You had the official diagnosis that Karla had a terminal condition and you lied and said you didn’t have that official diagnosis. Yet you have her medical records which prove you lied."

Because of the callousness of the BOP and Chapman, Karla’s terminal condition has gotten worse.

In a letter from the BOP to Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) dated April 9, 2009, Warden Chapman denies all of Hoyt’s allegations of incompetence, criminality and medical neglect. She also denies that Fuller has only six months to live and that their oncologist believes that women with her type of cancer "...have a life expectancy of greater than two years."

For these reasons, a decision for compassionate release is being suspended pending the completion of daily radiation therapy and the receipt of a new prognosisfrom the consulting oncologists.

Chapman also claims that Fuller and her family have not been denied access to her medical records and that she can obtain them through normal channels and send them to anyone she pleases.

Fuller’s scheduled release date is Feb. 21, 2010. Regardless of Chapman’s denial of Hoyt’s charges and her claim that Fuller is getting proper medical attention, Hoyt and Fuller’s family believe that her condition is terminal and the BOP is keeping her confined hoping she will die before she—and the truth—get out.

In support of his concerns, Hoyt explained in his letter to Chapman, "For weeks during radiation treatment and for three weeks after, a total of nine weeks, you and your staff denied Karla her right to see a neurologist to obtain the vertigo patch which would have helped the spasms she was experiencing, because you and your staff had decided that Karla ‘was faking spasms and seizures.’ And the fact that your staff now wants to insert a feeding tube proves that you and they are liars because the need for a feeding tube is an admission of the severity of the Astrocytoma tumor that causes spasms and seizures that affect swallowing."

Fuller’s case is exemplary of a mindset that has been building within the ranks of federal enforcers for years and appears to have taken over completely now at every level of its functioning. Because the highest levels of government allow the barbaric torture of "terror war detainees," lower levels of government allow imprisoned Americans to be tortured. Similarly, because officials in the highest public offices lie and deceive the public, officials in lower offices feel comfortable lying to and deceiving the public.

Hoyt asked Chapman, "Have you lost your humanity as [did] the Nazis during WWII? Or are you too tied into the bureaucratic nonsense that refuses to look at the human side of the equation?"

A recent diagnosis shows that Karla now has three cranial tumors and is passing into the end of life scenario. Her tumor prevents her from walking. Fuller is wheelchair bound and has received radiation therapy on the Astrocytoma tumor at the right side of her brain stem (caused by the tumor). Now she has a tumor behind her ear.

Chapman claims that Fuller is receiving proper medical attention. Hoyt and Fuller’s family see it differently.

Hoyt explains that Fuller’s present physical condition is as follows: "Every night Karla is given a pill by prescription, which she cannot swallow because of the large lump in her throat caused by the cancer. No one can fake these physiological symptoms. A portion of the medicine invariably slips out of her mouth and falls to the floor as she obediently tries to swallow. Thus, she is missing needed medication due to misconduct by staff. Needless to say, she cannot fake these autonomic responses. Her blood pressure has been charted at 200/106 during spasms (otherwise it is 88/60 which is way too low)."

Now he told Chapman, "Your staff is considering an abdominal feeding tube. Such a tube likely will cause a staph infection, especially since she already had a staph infection in her throat on January 12, 2009, and she has been gagging from the lump in her throat. Because she cannot swallow, and has another lump in her sinus cavity between her eyes, now she has started chemotherapy and is at risk of death for aspirating her own fluids as a result of the nausea. Her mother, Darlene Fuller, has witnessed Karla going into spasms spontaneously even when slightly jostled."

The truth is that Darlene visited Karla every available day for the first three weeks of March 2009. Hoyt further accused these sadistic criminals by saying, "It’s a very clever way you and your colleagues have developed to torture people: Give them cancer and then deny them timely and effective medical treatment. You torture people—which is a crime against humanity.

"So it is very simple—you gave her the cancer [referring to her being put in Adelanto Correctional Facility in California, where she developed her cancer], and you kept her from timely treatment to make certain she would die a slow and painful death from it. She is being given steroids so that her face and head have swollen to almost twice normal size."

Karla’s diagnosis reveals that patients in her category "have a low cure rate with standard local treatment and are terminal, which affects the brain stem, breathing, blood pressure, heart beat and swallowing. Characteristics cause fatigue, headaches and incapacitating neurological deficits (seizures). The patient can lose consciousness, have uncontrolled movements of body, arms and legs and lose control over bowel and bladder. These are symptoms that cannot be faked and those at the BOP responsible for saying so are liars."

Another factor that few people are aware of is the tremendous volume of money being sucked out of the system by private companies housing prisoners.

Hoyt said to Warden Chapman: "You are bent on keeping Karla in prison to continue making a profit on her. You prolong the death of dying inmates for months or years while you profit from their suffering. And these innocents are being sent to prisons in large numbers to feed the prison industry in America. This is the great wickedness of the prison system in America today."

Hoyt believes that the private, for profit, prison system will cause the downfall of America unless someone stops it now.

He urges journalists to tell their readership about this great injustice before it is too late. He acknowledges that most media is controlled by the feds. "The Federal government is so full of lies that it is hard to find the truth. This whole scenario is very disturbing, but it must be dealt with because more and more innocent people are being falsely accused of crimes made up by the federal and state governments," he said. "Each of you journalists to whom I have sent this information knows of someone in your life who is in prison and suffering."

Hoyt closed by stating that Americans really need to start talking about the prison system and make our people aware of what is going on, "so we can quit ignoring the fact that our government is lying to us and abusing our people."