MADISON, Wis. – While U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore and the left-wing political attack machine blame Sheriff David Clarke for the four deaths at the Milwaukee County Jail last year, a final autopsy confirms what Clarke has said all along: Inmates die from natural causes, and politicians make noise.
The autopsy, obtained by Wisconsin Watchdog, shows Michael Madden, 29, died in October of infective endocarditis with myocarditis — acute heart disease.
As Wisconsin Watchdog reported last month, Madden, who was pronounced dead at 2:23 a.m. on Oct. 28, had a history of drug abuse and problems from mitral valve prolapse, according to the medical examiner’s report.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s final autopsy details the natural causes that conspired to claim the Franklin man’s life.
Chief among them, infective endocarditis, an infection of the endocardial surface of the heart. The defect may lead to intractable congestive heart failure and myocardial abscesses.
“If left untreated, is generally fatal,” emedicine notes.
Madden’s mother, Gail Stockton, told investigators that Madden had been diagnosed at the age of 4 with a mitral valve prolapse, which had never been corrected. He also had aortic stenosis, one of the most common and most serious valve disease problems.
SHOOTING BACK: Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke says the media and liberal politicians have used inmate deaths as a political bludgeon to go after the outspoken conservative sheriff.
Madden was among three inmates to die at the jail overseen by Clarke in a six-month period. Another inmate gave birth to a stillborn baby. Claiming she did so without jail or medical staff helping when she went into labor, 30-year-old Shade Swayzer is now suing the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department for $8.5 million. Autopsy and investigative reports appear to show inconsistencies with Swayzer’s story to the press.
Moore, a Milwaukee Democrat, has joined a chorus of Clarke-hating local liberal officials blasting the sheriff for the inmate deaths. Moore, like her fellow party members and many in the mainstream media, have made their very public indignation a political assault on the conservative sheriff, who has been a key and vocal supporter of Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
“I’m alarmed,” Moore told Business Insider this week. “Particularly when I continue to hear from staffers from President-elect Trump that they’re still looking for a place to put Sheriff Clarke (in the administration) in an area of security. And this is very, very concerning.”
Business Insider approached the story in much the same way other publications have, focusing more on the outspoken Clarke’s ties to Trump than the actual facts surrounding the deaths.
“Over the last year, four people have died at the jail overseen by Clarke, who has come under fire from locals who say he has neglected his job while chasing stardom with his hard-nosed punditry,” Business Insider’s Allan Smith wrote.
Clarke has pushed back on the political posturing and journalistic “hit pieces.”
The sheriff is firing back.
“While Dem politicians play politics with the deceased, I had the discipline and decency to wait until the science (autopsy) came back with a finding and cause of death before commenting,” Clarke said in an email to Wisconsin Watchdog.
“The Journal Sentinel, CBS58, FOX6, CH12, TMJ4 could not resist to manufacture fake news because Sheriff Clarke was being politically attacked. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story no matter how untrue.
“Let’s see what attention this cause and manner of death this truth finder report gets,” Clarke added.
Ultimately, while the sheriff oversees the jail, the private health care provider responsible for assessing and monitoring the health of inmates is bound by a county contract. Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, not Clarke, is charged with handling the private provider.
Clarke’s critics have built a narrative of jail mismanagement, particularly pointing to the death of inmate Terrill J. Thomas, 38, of Milwaukee.
‘ALARMED’: U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, says she’s ‘alarmed’ by the deaths at the Milwaukee County jail. Clarke counters Moore and her liberal friends are playing ‘politics with the deceased.’
Thomas was found unresponsive in his cell in the early morning hours of April 24, nine days after he was arrested on a charge of shooting a man in the chest and later firing two shots in the Potawatomi casino.
The autopsy lists the cause of death as dehydration. It describes the severity as “profound dehydration.” The manner of death was classified as a homicide, but that does not necessarily denote a crime was committed.
Inmates told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel they could hear Thomas beg for water days before his death and that his faucet had been shut off. They said corrections officers told them his water was turned off because he had flooded his previous cell and was acting erratically, the newspaper reported.
A source close to the situation told Wisconsin Watchdog that jailers provided Thomas with bottled water but he refused to drink. Another source said a county judge had visited the jail days before and asked why there was water all over Thomas’ cell.
The autopsy notes jail staff checked on Thomas every half hour, in accordance with protocol. A source close to the situation said jailers did not alert medical staff that Thomas had stopped drinking his bottled water, however.
But the medical examiner’s report also notes the inmate’s record indicated “that he claimed to have untreated diabetes and hypertension upon admission and he was not taking any medication while in the jail.”
Thomas had high levels of creatinine, a waste product in the blood. If too much builds up in the blood stream, creatinine attacks various organs and systems through the circulatory system. Healthy adults’ creatinine levels range from .6 to 1.2 milligrams per deciliter. Thomas’ level was at 3.9, according to the autopsy.
A persistently high creatinine level can reveal the extent of kidney damage.
What has been buried in the coverage is the fact that the three inmates who died at the Milwaukee County Jail this year were some very unhealthy people dealing with the ramifications of drug abuse and serious physical illnesses, according to autopsies.
“Two inmates suffered from severe cardiac disease, which became critical when coupled with the effects of hardcore drug usage prior to their incarceration, with their extensive drug histories independently noted in their death investigations,” Clarke told Wisconsin Watchdog last month.
RELATED: Death part of life in county jails
Statewide, as of late December, there were 20 inmate deaths in Wisconsin’s jails in 2016, nine of those suicides, according to Department of Corrections statistics.
Nationally, a total of 1,053 inmates died while in the custody of local jails in 2014, the latest data available, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Over the last two years, the Milwaukee County Jail has recorded four deaths, all in 2016. Eight inmates have died at the jail since 2011.
The smaller Brown County Jail in Green Bay experienced three inmate deaths in 2014 and 2015; two were last year, both of those suicides. Outagamie County’s corrections facility in Appleton also has recorded three deaths over the period.
Kenosha County, as of late December, had recorded nine inmate deaths, all suicides, since 2013.
Dane and Waukesha county jails each have noted three deaths since 2015. Little Monroe County, with an average inmate population of 111, documented two deaths over the period.
But those county jails are not led by conservative, outspoken sheriffs like Clarke, who has been highly critical of the mainstream media and liberal politicians, nor are those counties’ sheriffs nationally prominent Trump supporters.
“This has everything to do with politics and my support of Donald Trump,” he told Wisconsin Watchdog last month. “These people are invested in bringing me down.”