Timothy Burgess, the Vermont leader for Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, is helping to spearhead the event. Vermont Just Justice, a nonprofit and blog advocating for criminal justice reform, is organizing the Statehouse rally on May 4. Haley Sommer, a corrections spokesperson, said on Wednesday that the department would have no comment on its investigation.Ī representative for Mitchell’s family declined to speak for this story. Deml also said Mitchell had a “robust medical history.” All five also said a corrections officer told Mitchell he would be sent to segregation if he didn’t stop complaining.įour said Mitchell used an oxygen tank and three said he had been removed from buprenorphine, which is commonly used to treat opioid dependency, in the days before his death.Ĭorrections Commissioner Nick Deml last week denied any misconduct in Mitchell’s death, saying that an “initial review” did not line up with the account first shared by White. In interviews conducted over the phone, as well as using video and messaging apps, all five men described Mitchell begging for help before and after he was briefly seen by medical staff on the morning of his death. The new accounts of Mitchell’s final hours, which Matthew Hewitt, 33, Louis Tobin, 36, and Randy Persad, 46, shared with VTDigger this week, largely align with those previously shared by Preston Lawson, 22, and John White, 35. An autopsy to determine Mitchell’s cause of death was still pending on Wednesday, and investigations by the state police, Department of Corrections and Defender General’s Office are ongoing. Most of those deaths have been attributed to natural causes, death certificates show. The 46-year-old died on April 17 after he had “difficulty breathing,” Vermont State Police said in a press release that day. Mitchell was the 12th person to die at the Springfield prison since January 2022, according to official reports. The rally, organized by the nonprofit Vermont Just Justice, will also honor other people who have died recently in Vermont’s prisons. Spurred by his death, prisoners’ rights advocates are planning a protest in front of the Statehouse next week. A total of five people who were incarcerated near David Mitchell have now described him pleading for medical care before he died at Southern State Correctional Facility.
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