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

"I'm a mother. I see sick people. I've seen sick children . . . I saw her yelling."

The medical clinic says it has no record of calls from guard Lieppert or guard Akpan.

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

Tamela Harper, inmate

(2007 deposition)

At 10 a.m. on January 5, ambulance attendants arrive at Estrella jail for Deborah Braillard.

"I was there for my Accu-Chek because I'm a diabetic.

"I saw her lying on the stretcher, and EMS was there helping her, and I heard one EMS ask the other one what was the vital signs. And when he told her the vital signs [116 over 63], they just looked at each other, like, wow. And that's when they took her out.

"The officer started yelling at me for me to sit down, and I started yelling at him, 'You were wrong for all that. You could have helped her.'

"I was told by the guard, 'Sit down and don't be looking at this. This is none of your concern.'

"Us inmates requested medical attention more than half a dozen times.

"They wouldn't do it. 'She's kicking.' 'Get over it. Deal with it. This is jail.' 'It was her fault that she did it to herself. What can we do?'"

Jennylee Braillard, daughter

(2010 interviews)

"I was living with my grandmother. After my uncle moved to Arizona, he convinced my grandmother to move to Phoenix to escape Mom's drama. We came here in '95-'96. My mom moved to Spokane, and we all took a trip back to Washington to see her. We went out to dinner, but that was when I was angry with Mom. I didn't want to be apart. Didn't understand why she did the things she did. I ran out to the bathroom. Mom followed me, and we had serious discussion about all this, both crying. The thing I remember is her saying over and over that she loved me. She said she never hit me.

"I vented, and then things were fine between us. I had to accept who she was. She did take care of me. She was good to me.

"She visited Arizona twice, and that's when we learned, at the hospital, that she was a diabetic. It runs in the family.

"Shortly after that, she moved to Arizona. She drove her beat-up Datsun full of her stuff and lived with me and Grandma. We both worked in my uncle's pizza place. At first, there was conflict, because she tried to become boss in the house. But she improved herself in all areas. She was clean."

If Jennylee was content with the status quo, her mom was not. She stage-managed a romance for her daughter.

"She instigated this thing where I went out with [a] driver for the pizzeria. He had a buzzed head with a blue dot."

When the family pizza business closed its doors, mother and daughter went to work at a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Consider: Deputy Cindy Rodriguez does the intake interview of Deborah Braillard about 2 a.m. January 2. Officer Rodriguez is required to interview Braillard about her medical history. This is when the Sheriff's Office should've discovered that the inmate was an insulin-dependent diabetic.

But Rodriguez has no training and is learning on the job. She does not review the police report, which clearly shows Deborah Braillard is on medication.

Because those under arrest are often unreliable, untruthful, or unable to give a full accounting of their health, the national standard is that pre-existing medical records at the jail must be reviewed.

Deputy Rodriguez fails to examine Braillard's medical history on record with the jail, records from previous arrests that show clearly that Deborah is an insulin-dependent diabetic.

Without daily insulin injections, Braillard will go into a coma and die.

But intake officers are under pressure from Sheriff Joe Arpaio to process prisoners more quickly.

Computer records show that Officer Rodriguez entered the information into the database in 59 seconds.

Just as alarming, Sheriff Arpaio's records contain no "receiving screening" form for the time and date of Deborah's actual admission: 2:26 a.m. on January 2, 2005.

Instead, the receiving screening form produced by Maricopa County is dated after her intake. Days later, in fact — after Deborah already had been taken by ambulance to County Hospital, where she died. The receiving screening form is dated January 5, 2005, about 12 hours after Deborah was transported to the hospital.

A nurse in the jail explains why intake paperwork is filled out after a death.

She sees inmates admitted without ever being asked a single question.

"It is a custom, practice, and pattern."

Deborah Braillard, mother

I lived my life thinking I'm a rebel. I'm not like my mother, all moody and sullen about life's hard knocks. Not me. I love the bad boys. I live the life. I did not join the system.

Now look at me.

Lost my Pumpkin, the only one I truly love.

I'm delusional, that's what I am. I'm not outside the system. I am the system. My every move is documented. Every shoplifting report, every security guard, every cop, the juvenile probation officer, the pre-sentence report, the confessions, the plea bargains, the motions, the booking slips, the credit card scams, the mug shots. I am as indelible as a fingerprint. I am the fully revealed cog.