Marcia Powell's Death Officially an Accident

Marcia Powell's Autopsy Report Rules Cage Death in ADC Custody an "Accident"

The Phoenix News Times

By Stephen Lemons in Feathered Bastard

Monday, Aug. 31 2009 @ 12:34PM

Marcia Powell, who died in ADC custody May 20

The Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office has released the autopsy report and toxicology results for Marcia Powell, the 48-year-old woman who died May 20 after being confined to a human cage at Perryville Prison in Goodyear for some four hours in the blazing Arizona sun.


The conclusion of Medical Examiner Mark Fischione is that the cause of death was due to "complications of hyperthermia due to environmental heat exposure." The manner of death is ruled an "accident." You can read the report for yourself, here.


The external examination revealed blistering and first and second degree "thermal injuries" on her upper body, arms and face. Toxicology showed that she tested positive for several medications, including Benztropine, a medication for Parkinson disease, the antipsychotic medication Haloperidol, and valproic acid, a mood-stabilizing drug used to treat depression and epilepsy.


Donna Hamm, with the advocacy group Middle Ground Prison Reform, said her group was concerned with the findings.


"We are trying to reserve judgment until we see everything, including the DOC investigation," said Hamm, whose organization ultimately took custody of Powell's remains, "but the autopsy does seem to raise the question of how far prison officials can go before something they do is ruled a reckless homicide. I guess the county attorney will make that final decision. We will certainly be interested in how this plays out."


Powell was serving a 27-month stint for prostitution at Perryville, when, according to an Arizona Department of Corrections statement released at the time, she was "placed in an outside, uncovered, chain-linked holding cell at 11 a.m.," on a day temperatures reached a 107 degree high.


"At 2:40 p.m., Powell collapsed," the statement continues. "Powell was taken to West Valley Hospital at 3:12 p.m. She was pronounced dead at 12:42 a.m. Wednesday [May 20]."


ADC honcho Charles Ryan gave the order for Powell's life support to be suspended on the advice of the physicians on duty, according to him. It was later learned that Powell had a guardian, the Office of the Public Fiduciary. Ryan told me following a memorial service for Powell at Encanto Community Church in Phoenix that he did not know Powell had a guardian when he gave the order suspending life support and that ADC had no record of a guardian in its files.


The fiduciary's office undertook an extensive investigation seeking a next of kin to take possession of Powell's remains. Powell's adoptive mother Joanne Buck, 76, of La Quinta, California was located by the fiduciary, but she said she'd had "very little contact" over the years with Powell, most of which was unpleasant. She told the fiduciary that she didn't want to take custody of Powell's remains.


Other leads on the whereabouts of Powell's family did not pan out for the fiduciary. A son turned up having been murdered. A daughter was adopted by family in Tempe, but there was no indication as to where the girl might be.


Another person by the name of Troy Troutman (with the alternative spelling of "Trautman") was listed in one of Powell's mental health files as "next of kin," with no further explanation. In testimony before Commissioner Michael Hintze concerning the matter, a representative for the fiduciary's office speculated that Troutman might be a son, but they could not locate him.


Hamm says that a prisoner who was in with Powell told her that Powell had a son named Troy. The medical examiner's report indicates Powell had several tattoos, one of which was the name "Troy" on her upper right arm. Others were of a flower, a teardrop, and the names "John" and "John C."


Powell's cremains were committed June 28 at Shadow Rock United Church of Christ in Phoenix. Her body may now be laid to rest, so to speak, but the questions concerning her death still resonate.


Why was she left in the 107 degree heat without water for about four hours, if not more? Did the drugs in her system, combined with the extreme heat and sunlight, exacerbate her condition? And why was ADC chief Ryan so quick to pull Powell's plug, when a little more time would have revealed a guardian and some next of kin?

Next of Kin

I am an educated woman. I've studied the prison industrial complex extensively, compared even to people more educated than me. I've read the works of scholars like Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, and Joy James. I've struck gold with books put out by collectives like Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.

I consider myself to be an abolitionist. There's no such thing as a good prison, etc. etc. I'm as much of a skeptic as I am an idealist. I was originally radicalized in my 20's doing outreach to people with mental illness who were dying in the shelters, jails, and streets. I think our society is - by and large - racist, classist, elitist, and of course misogynistic and patriarchal. I suspect that the criminal justice system functions exactly as it's intended to, even when it incarcerates the "innocent", and kills the people we so casually toss aside. It keeps all the potential riff raff in line to know that even they could go to prison any time.

We'll spend $26,000 per prisoner per year on incarceration - about 10% of Arizona's state budget. That's a real commitment. That's more than a year of grad school at the University of Michigan costs. That tells me that mass incarceration is paying off for someone. It's an investment. We're talking about leasing prison facilities for 50 years. We're reserving room for our great grandchildren there.

I think a lot about the implications of that.

Marcia's death triggered me to start this blog, to reach out to others, and to at least try to take meaningful action after years of trying to tame my own demons. But it also distracted me from the central tasks of abolition, which are not located in individual crisis-intervention or reforming our prisons; the real work to be done is in transforming our communities. As Montini points out in his column today, the challenge that Marcia Powell represents has to do with how she lived, not how she died.

I know if I go to her service I will cry, but perhaps it is time. Grief still dwells in me for so many people I know who lived and died alone, virtually unknown to all but their keepers and fellow travellers in the various institutions we erect to confine or correct them. For several I was next of kin. I was one of the few who witnessed Love manifest in their lives in moments of profound generosity and kindness towards those who suffered with them. A salvaged cigarette butt shared around the fire. A seat given up to an old solider or a young mother at the free meal. A word of concern about a sick neighbor to a shelter worker. A few bucks hustled up to pay for an elder's medication. A makeshift memorial in tribute to a street preacher. A smile. A hug. A friend. Half of nothing to someone who has even less.

Those good souls deserve far more respect and consideration than the swaggering politicians and upstanding citizens who toss pennies, platitudes, and criminal sanctions at the poor when they beg on the sidewalk and make up new life stories - lies to justify their existence - on signs at freeway exits.

It isn't that I don't see the bigger picture. It's that I've been riveted to thousands of tiny pieces through the years, an intimate observer to so many tortured minds and shattered lives, and I know it doesn't have to be that way. No one "deserves" to be thrown away. It is us, not so much "them", who need to change. Perhaps then we will finally elect a government that represents the heart of The People instead of the financial interests of the petty, selfish, Privileged Few.