Associated Press
MONTPELIER, Vt. — The Vermont Legislature’s Corrections Oversight Committee is getting some tough questions about why it’s not immediately looking into three recent deaths of state prison inmates.
Annette Douglas, an inmate nearing release from the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, died in January of complications from a medical condition. Patrick Fennessey committed suicide at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield in April. James Nicholoson, a Vermont inmate at a private prison in Kentucky, died May 18, several weeks after an assault in that facility.
Gordon Bock of the prisoner rights group CURE Vermont says he hoped the deaths would get a hearing at Thursday’s meeting of the oversight committee.
But committee chairman Sen. Richard Sears says with Nicholoson’s autopsy incomplete, and a key official unable to attend, the matter has to wait.