Cancer Treatment, Burial Cost $43,000 : County Accuses Nevada of ‘Dumping’ Dying Prisoner

Angry San Diego County leaders charged Monday that Nevada officials released a terminally ill inmate from prison early and gave him a one-way airline ticket to San Diego, where he received about $43,000 in public aid before dying in January.

In a letter of protest to be sent to Nevada Gov. Bob Miller, Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Susan Golding accused Nevada of sending 64-year-old David Jackson “to San Diego to die,” thereby unfairly burdening San Diego taxpayers for the health treatments, social services and burial costs of the longtime Nevada prisoner.

“The taxpayers of San Diego and California have been burdened with a very large bill,” Golding said. “It is unconscionable to expect us to absorb the (costs) associated with the dying prisoner of another state.”

Nevada Denies Dumping

Nevada prison officials, however, denied “dumping” Jackson, who spent most of his adult life in prison, on San Diego after his release last September.

“Nevada would never dump someone on another state simply to avoid a medical expense,” said John Slansky, the chief of Nevada’s Department of Parole and Probation. “As heartless as we’re accused of being, we don’t do things like that.”

The unusual case came to light when investigators in the county’s Public Administrator Department unsuccessfully attempted to locate relatives of Jackson to recoup the county’s expense in cremating him after his death from cancer.

During that investigation, county officials learned that Jackson had been given a one-way airline ticket to San Diego by the Nevada Prisons Department last September after serving only one year of a four-year sentence.

That fact--and other disputed ones--led county officials to infer that Jackson’s release had less to do with humanitarian considerations than with Nevada’s desire to send a dying, longtime prisoner to another state.

“The demand for human care services in each of our jurisdictions, I am certain, outstrips the available resources,” Golding wrote in the letter to Miller. “We need to have mutual respect for these limitations. . . I would appreciate your examining this incident to hopefully validate that it was simply an isolated episode.”

During his four months in San Diego, Jackson received about $43,000 in various forms of public assistance, with most of that being incurred during a 10-day stay in the UC San Diego Medical Center, where he underwent surgery, and 16 subsequent days of chemotherapy treatments. Other public aid paid for his stay as an indigent resident of a Lemon Grove intermediate care facility, general welfare payments and social services assistance from the Logan Heights Family Health Center, according to Judith Gretton, the county’s acting assistant public administrator.

San Diego and Nevada officials differ, however, on several key points concerning Jackson’s release and how he ended up in San Diego.

Central Role in Release

According to county officials, the Nevada governor’s office played a central role in Jackson’s early release. In Golding’s letter, she states that county investigators determined that “the Nevada governor’s office relieved the uncompleted sentence” of Jackson because of his terminal illness. (Jackson’s release occurred during the tenure of Miller’s predecessor as governor, Richard Bryan.)

Within two weeks of Jackson’s cancer being diagnosed at a Reno hospital in late August, 1988, the governor’s office approved his release from the Northern Nevada Correctional Facility in Carson City, county officials said.

Nevada parole administrator Slansky, however, contended that the governor’s office was not directly involved in Jackson’s release and did nothing to expedite it.

At the time of Jackson’s release, Slansky explained, he had “expired” his sentence, even though he had served only about 51 weeks of a four-year term for attempted grand larceny. However, Jackson had spent nearly six months in a county jail before beginning his prison sentence. That time, combined with time off for good behavior and work credits, explains the “early” release of Jackson, Slansky said.

As it does for all inmates who have completed their sentence, the Nevada Department of Prisons bought Jackson an airline ticket to San Diego, the destination that he requested.

‘A Free Agent’

“Yes, he flew to San Diego,” Slansky said. “But, was that an effort on the part of this department or the state of Nevada to get him out of the state to relieve ourselves of a medical obligation? Absolutely not.”

Bryn Armstrong, chairman of the Nevada Pardons Board, added: “Once a guy’s released, he’s a free agent. He can go anywhere he wants.”

Jackson’s record at the time of his release included 54 arrests, 7 felony convictions, 5 prison sentences and 18 jail sentences. One of those sentences was for a first-degree robbery conviction in San Diego in 1961, Slansky said.

“So he had a San Diego connection of some kind,” Slansky added. “It may not have been a big connection, but he obviously had been there before.”

When a reporter informed Golding’s staff of the factual discrepancies, her aides said the letter to Miller, originally set to be mailed Monday, probably would be delayed so that the details in dispute can be rechecked.

“If nothing else, the details are certainly very curious,” said Bob Lerner, a spokesman for Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey. “It seems more than coincidental that he ended up here just after Nevada found out he had cancer.”