A lawyer for the state and two nurses said nothing was done wrong in the treatment of Cynthia Brace.
Cynthia BraceSPRINGFIELD – There was nothing “sudden or silent” about the death Cynthia Brace endured at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow in August 2005, the lawyer for her estate argued Tuesday.
Shawn P. Allyn, who brought suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of Brace’s estate and her husband Cecil Brace, said her death was the result of improper assessment, lack of communications and lack of monitoring and treatment of her condition as she experienced alcohol withdrawal.
Edward McDonough, representing the state and two nurses at the jail – the three named defendants in the civil suit – said Brace’s death certificate “is unshakable evidence in this case.”
Showing the death certificate on a monitor in the federal courtroom, he said the cause of death is listed as cardiac arrhythmia.
“It does not say she died from alcohol withdrawal,” he said.
The jury will continue deliberations Wednesday after deliberating for about four hours Tuesday.
Cynthia Brace, 41, was arrested along with her son and husband Cecil in 2005 for essentially hijacking the home of an elderly friend in Holyoke, assaulting the man and turning his house into a drug den.
Family members pleaded guilty to charges in 2006, including Cecil Brace who admitting assaulting the homeowner, receiving stolen property and possessing cocaine.
McDonough said Steven Gobielle and Jennifer Kane, nurses who were on duty at the jail when Brace was brought in after her arrest and when she died, have for seven years “been unfairly and publicly blamed for this death.” Gobielle and Kane are two of the named defendants, with the other being the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
McDonough attacked the reputation of defense expert witness Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, who he said testified like “a hired gun.”
Laposata told jurors that Brace died of “untreated opiate and ethanol (alcohol) withdrawal.”
McDonough accused Laposata of purposely forgetting her file on the case when she traveled here to testify from Rhode Island.
“She didn’t want me to see the file. She didn’t want you to see the file,” he said.
McDonough said “when cornered,” Laposata couldn’t deny what was written on the death certificate as cause of death.
“What did Steve and Jen have to do with that?” he said. “Nothing...Exonerate these two nurses.”
Allyn said Brace is dead because of “two people (Gobielle and Kane) who failed to do their jobs.”
He said Kane did not do a complete medical intake of Brace, and just sent her to segregation without any medical plan after doing a “mini-intake.”
“I never told you the Brace family was a perfect family,” Allyn said. He said Cynthia Brace “may have been lost in her ways” but documents show she sought addiction treatment at different points in her history.