SACRAMENTO — Fed up with a "business as usual" attitude among state prison officials, a federal judge Thursday ordered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to take immediate action to resolve a healthcare crisis that kills an average of one California inmate each week.
If the judge's mandates are not carried out, lawyers said, the governor could be ordered into court to face charges of contempt, a humiliating prospect for any political leader.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, in his strongly worded order, said he would not sit by while officials "twiddle their collective thumbs" as prisoners continue to suffer and die from medical neglect and incompetence.
Instead, he told the governor to personally appoint -- by next Thursday -- a top lieutenant to carry out a series of immediate fixes, including steps designed to stem the exodus of doctors and nurses caring for inmates behind bars.
Henderson "is putting the governor on notice that he had better get personally involved in this extreme emergency," said lawyer Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, which has sued the state over inmate medical care. "I don't think the judge could be any more frustrated."
Julie Soderlund, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said the governor "has been and remains committed to making the necessary reforms in our prison healthcare system." She noted that Monday he appointed two new leaders of the medical division who have a combined six decades of experience in healthcare management.
One of them, Dr. Peter Farber-Szekrenyi, the new chief of healthcare services, will be the designated czar that the judge called for in his order and will work directly with the governor's office on reforms, Soderlund said.
About the time Schwarzenegger was appointing the medical officials in Sacramento, Henderson, who sits on the federal bench in San Francisco, was holding a hearing with lawyers in the case. The veteran jurist said he was "taking the gloves off" because of what he perceived as a "no can do" attitude among those in charge of tackling the healthcare crisis.
The judge said it was unacceptable that preventable deaths continued in the 168,000-inmate system. He also told Schwarzenegger he should find money for emergency fixes "the same way you find the money to build a tent to smoke cigars" in the Capitol. The governor, a cigar lover, occasionally lights up in a tent outside his office because state law forbids smoking in public buildings.
