The Freedom to Die at Home

If there were a Who’s Who of petty thieves, Frank Mills wouldn’t be likely to land on the list.

His burglaries never made headlines. Most everything he stole went to feed his heroin habit. His last bungled job was typical: He took $20 in tools from a garage in West Covina and, when the homeowner caught him, he didn’t even bother to run. For that, his third strike, he got 25 years to life.

Today, nine years later, the 45-year-old Mills sits in a Corcoran State Prison cell wasting away from terminal liver disease, holding on to a dim hope: that the Department of Corrections will grant him a compassionate release so he can die at home.

He is an ideal candidate, his family and friends say, for the state program that frees inmates who have six months or less to live. None of his crimes were violent. And even if he wanted to, they say, he’s too sick to steal anyone’s DVD player or stereo. He’s lost nearly 100 pounds -- down to 135 -- and walks with a cane.

Yet more than two years after prison doctors declared Mills eligible for compassionate release, he languishes in pain in one of Corcoran’s general population units, costing taxpayers more than $1,000 a week to keep him incarcerated.

“It makes no sense,” said his sister, Teri Dossey. “Why should taxpayers be spending any more money to keep him locked up when we’re willing to bring him home and pay for all his care so he can die with dignity?”

The issue of compassionate release is again in the public eye with a new bill -- recently passed by the state Assembly -- that seeks to increase the number of inmates who can apply for and receive early release.

Under the program, dying inmates can be released with the approval of the warden, the director of corrections and a Superior Court judge. The only inmates not eligible are those on death row or sentenced to life without parole.

Because compassionate release is viewed by many as a longshot with many bureaucratic obstacles, only a handful of the 300 or so inmates who end up dying in state prisons each year even apply for the program.

The number of inmates granted compassionate release has dropped from 31 in 1996 to 10 last year. Since 1991, 251 dying inmates have won early release in California, a number considerably smaller than in states with comparable prison populations.

In Texas, for example, a hard-nosed prison system with 148,000 inmates compared with California’s 162,000, about 73 inmates a year are granted early release because of terminal disease or physical disability, according to Texas corrections officials.

“We have a grossly low number of inmates who are granted compassionate release in California,” said Cynthia Chandler, co-director of Justice Now, an Oakland-based law group that advocates for dying inmates. “The process is viewed as incredibly daunting and very difficult to understand. Most inmates faced with such hurdles say, ‘Why bother?’ ”

Proponents argue that a better-run compassionate release program would save the Corrections Department millions in medical costs. Those costs are sure to climb, they say, as more inmates serving life sentences become older and more infirm.

The new bill, introduced by Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), ensures that dying inmates and their families are informed of the program and makes quadriplegics and other physically incapacitated inmates eligible for it.

“A lot of inmates and their families don’t know that compassionate release even exists,” said Steinberg, who also heads the Budget Committee. “This bill will require the Department of Corrections to notify them about the process, and that alone should increase the numbers.”

Not to be lost, Steinberg added, is the issue of compassion itself. “A civilized society allows for mercy in the appropriate cases,” he said. “If you have a dying inmate without any violent history, it makes sense to consider him for early release.”

The bill is not opposed by the Corrections Department or the prison guards union. In addition, the state’s two most prominent victims rights groups, which keep a close watch on California officials to make sure they are holding criminals to full account, don’t have a problem with compassionate release as long as the inmates aren’t convicted first-degree murderers who could pose a danger to society.

“If the person you’re talking about isn’t a murderer and, in fact, has end-stage liver disease, it doesn’t make much difference to us if he dies in prison or dies at home,” said Kent Scheidegger, of the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. About Mills, he said, “We’re not talking about a Charles Manson here.”

Mills, who was sent to Corcoran State Prison in Kings County in 1995, was diagnosed in December 2001 as being in the final stages of cirrhosis. Doctors recommended him for compassionate release because “his life expectancy is probably less than six months,” prison documents show.

Mills filled out the paperwork for early release, but the warden at the time, George Galaza, deemed him a “serious danger to society” and turned down the request.

A warden’s denial cannot be appealed, and that won’t change even if Steinberg’s bill becomes law. Mills’ sister and brother said the warden’s decision was arbitrary at best. Nothing in his criminal record, they argue, indicates that he poses a danger. A rap sheet provided by the Corrections Department indicated that he had been convicted of four burglaries and possession of a controlled substance.

Mills’ family traces his drug addiction to his teenage years in Baldwin Park, when he watched his father, an ironworker and an alcoholic, physically abuse his mother. During one fight in December 1975, Mills’ mother fatally shot his father. Mills blamed himself, his family said, because he had run away from home that day and caused a confrontation between his parents. A jury acquitted the mother, finding that the shooting was an accident.

“Addiction runs in our family,” said his brother, Mark Mills, a recovering alcoholic who builds limousines. “Frank just couldn’t beat it. Burglary is the worst he’s done, and none of his crimes involved guns.”

His family believes Mills contracted hepatitis in prison. They said his liver is so damaged from drugs and alcohol that ammonia builds up in his body, causing severe migraines, delusions and blackouts. Because Mills has outlived the initial prognosis by more than two years, his family said, prison doctors were no longer willing to say that he had less than six months to live. Without that certification, he is ineligible to apply again for compassionate release.

“One of the doctors is now saying that my brother ‘played tricks on them,’ ” Dossey said. “How do you play tricks when you’ve got a terminal disease? It’s a miracle that he’s lived this long, but he’s growing weaker by the day. With end-stage liver disease, he could die tomorrow.”

Dr. Corey Weinstein of California Prison Focus, a San Francisco-based watchdog group that is tracking Mills’ condition, said his disease was terminal. “It’s hard to say when someone has only six months to live. But you don’t have remissions and you don’t get better with end-stage liver disease. It is slowly and relentlessly progressive. When the liver can’t detoxify, it leads to seizures and then coma.”

Corrections officials said they could not comment on Mills’ condition because of medical privacy laws. “All I can tell you is a physician’s progress report says he does not meet the criteria for compassionate release at this time,” said Margot Bach, a corrections spokeswoman.

In a letter to Mills’ brother last December, Warden A.K. Scribner turned down the family’s request that Mills be sent to a prison hospice in Vacaville, which is equipped to deal with terminally ill patients.

“Your brother is currently undergoing regular treatment for his pain by our pain management specialist,” Scribner wrote. “Your brother is being provided adequate medical treatment for his condition.”

Because of a lockdown at Corcoran State Prison, his family hasn’t seen Mills for two months. But his letters home and a recent visit from a prison watchdog group have caused them to worry. Mills said doctors have cut his dosage of methadone in half, and the pain in his bones is so intense that he can’t sleep. One doctor keeps encouraging him to take more aspirin. He said he refuses because aspirin will only worsen his internal bleeding, which he says is already at a serious level.

“I’m laying here in pain and suffering all night,” he wrote in a recent letter to his sister. “I would not let a dog lay here like this.”

After a February visit to the prison, a staff member at California Prison Focus detailed Mills’ medical woes: swelling of the extremities, blood in his urine, blurred vision and blackouts.

“Palliative care does not exist at Corcoran. Special diets for the dying do not exist at Corcoran,” said Judy Greenspan, who heads the group’s HIV-hepatitis C committee. “If they’re not going to give Frank Mills compassionate release, then they need to put him on a bus and send him to the hospice in Vacaville. It’s that simple, and yet they refuse.”