Prisons Routinely Ignore Guidelines on Dying Inmates’ End-of-Life Choices

Prisons Routinely Ignore Guidelines on Dying Inmates’ End-of-Life Choices

Brian Rigsby was lying with his right wrist shackled to a hospital bed in Montgomery, Alabama, when he learned he didn’t have long to live. It was September 2023, and Rigsby, 46, had been brought to Jackson Hospital from an Alabama state prison 10 days earlier after complaining of pain and swelling in his abdomen. Doctors found that untreated hepatitis C had caused irreversible damage to Rigsby’s liver, according to his medical records. Rigsby d…