What's Mom Worth?: When a Woman Became Deathly Ill in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Jail, Guards and Nurses Ignored Her Agony

Garfias fills out the paperwork.

"At approximately 2:45, Deborah was placed in the dayroom due to the fact she's kicking and was groaning, yelling, and keeping the whole dorm up, and the dorm kept yelling at her to shut up."

Deborah Braillard, mother

Deposition of Sandra Garfias

Details

To see videotaped depositions with sources in this story, as well as a videotaped interview with Deborah Braillard's daughter, Jennylee, click, here or on the names below:

Lucy Akpan
Jennylee Braillard
Sandra Garfias
Tamela Harper
Stephanie Lieppert
Brenda Tomanini
Dr. Todd Wilcox

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Editor’s note: In 2007, New Times executive editor Michael Lacey and CEO Jim Larkin were arrested by Sheriff Joe Arpaio for reporting on a grand jury. A subsequent investigation by the paper revealed that the grand jury subpoenas were issued without a sitting grand jury. In addition to all reporter’s notes relating to articles about the sheriff, prosecutors sought the identity of online readers of New Times. Michael Manning filed a lawsuit on behalf of the paper in the wake of the arrests. That lawsuit is currently on appeal.

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More About

• Deborah Braillard
• Joe Arpaio
• Todd Wilcox
• Metabolic Disorders
• Internal Medicine

Although Braillard is moaning, screaming, vomiting repeatedly, and soiling herself, Garfias does not call for medical. Instead, she deposits the woman in a blue plastic canoe stuffed with bedding in the empty dayroom.

"As far as her bothering me . . . that wouldn't bother me since I was going to be up all night anyway."

Tamela Harper, inmate

(2007 deposition)

"We could still hear Deborah in the dayroom making calls out for help. She was moaning. Basically, in a moan, you are wanting help in some sort of way. They wouldn't do anything that morning."

Jennylee Braillard

(2010 interviews)

"Even when I was little, I knew she was using . . . There was no difference between when Mom was using and when she wasn't. She took care of me. Made my meals. Besides her issues, she was a good mom. When she was in rehab [in Washington state], I'd spend every weekend there. Slept over. It was great. At one point, we went camping. Another time, there was a talent show, and all the people were really nice. All the families got involved. Mom and I and another girl and her mom, we all sang, 'Going to the Chapel.'"

But Jennylee noticed early that her mom always fell for the wrong guy. She collected animals and losers as if she were their patron saint.

"Needless to say, Mom met a guy in rehab, and they left the program. He nearly beat her to death in a hotel. The cleaning lady found her unconscious."

Brenda Tomanini, inmate

(2007 deposition)

"To think that the staff didn't care that this woman is moaning and groaning and she's pleading for help. I don't know what's wrong with you. There can be a whole lot of things wrong with you, but I would want to try to get you some type of medical attention."

At 7 a.m. on January 5, detention officers Stephanie Lieppert and Lucy Akpan start their shift. Garfias tells them the inmate in the dayroom is kicking drugs. They move Deborah Braillard out of the day room back to her cell.

Tamela Harper, inmate

(2007 deposition)

"That morning [January 5] they put her back in the main area in her bunk. She had another seizure. She had several seizures, as many as seven."

Consider: On January 4, at 8:17 p.m., a friend attempts to visit Braillard but is informed that Deborah is too sick to see anyone. An hour and a half later, at 9:42 p.m., another friend, Debbie Fouts, phones the jail and informs them that Braillard is a diabetic and apparently has not received her insulin.

Deputy Brenda O'Neil takes down the information during the conversation with Fouts about Braillard's insulin and faxes it to the jail's medical clinic, about 40 feet from where the inmate is vomiting and defecating and moaning.

Deputy O'Neil's fax violates all protocol. Because a fax is notoriously unreliable, policy insists the critical information be conveyed personally.

None of the nurses in the clinic looks at the fax. Not when it comes in. Not ever.

At 11 p.m. on January 4, Jennylee gets a call from a woman, a friend of Deborah's. Jennylee learns for the first time that her mom is locked up. She immediately calls the jail.

Jennylee Braillard, daughter

(2010 interview)

"I called the number they give you and got her booking number, her charges, but it's basically an automated answering machine."

Jennylee then dashes over to her mom's house where she confronts her mom's boyfriend. He was with Deborah when she was arrested three nights earlier.

At 7 the next morning, Jennylee again phones the jail. She is put through to Dennis Flynn, risk manager with County Health. She informs him that her mother is an insulin-dependent diabetic who may not be receiving her medication.

"Was there any way he could get back to me?" she asks.

"No."

"He thanked me for calling and assured me something would be done. When I hung up, I didn't know what to do."

Stephanie Lieppert, guard

(2007 deposition)

"She threw up again after I moved her back into her cell [from the boat in the dayroom], and just knowing that she had been up that night vomiting and having diarrhea, that would indicate to me that someone needs to be seen."

She calls the medical clinic on the morning of January 5.

Is this the policy of the sheriff?

"No, it is not . . . We were given first-aid training, CPR training. They are very brief on the situation of kicking. We are not told to notify anyone in particular."

Lucy Akpan, guard

(2007 deposition)

After detention officer Garfias informed her that Braillard was kicking drugs, Akpan called the medical clinic on the morning of January 5.

It is Akpan's experience that the clinic is sometimes reluctant to respond to concerns about inmates' medical conditions.

"She started yelling and screaming — rolling, you know, in the boat . . . I said, 'She has to leave this place. She needs medical attention' . . . It's so devastating because I was, like, how can someone do this to herself?