I spent 40 years working in healthcare, mostly as a certified nursing assistant, taking care of elderly and infirmed patients. None of that prepared me to watch my own son grow ill and die in prison, on the receiving end of what a federal court recently ruled was a cruel and unusual lack of care.

My son Farrell Sampier was 45 when he was sentenced to 20 years in the Louisiana State prison system. He died at 51, shackled to a hospital bed.

Farrell wasn’t a violent man, but like any father I know, he wasn’t going to stand around while someone threatened and abused his daughter and his grandbaby. That was how Farrell wound up in a shooting with Antonio Miller, the father of his grandchild.

Between the time of his arrest and the plea deal that sent him to Angola prison on a 20-year sentence for manslaughter, Farrell remained behind bars at Orleans Parish Prison, the New Orleans jail. It was there that the funny, active, energetic son I knew fell gravely ill. First his feet went numb, then the numbness traveled up his legs and started to impede his movement. By the time Farrell was transferred to prison, he was using a wheelchair, but hadn’t yet received the kind of medical attention that could lead to a diagnosis.

Eventually, he would be diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder of the spine typically caused by infection. Farrell and I both suspected the disease was triggered by unsanitary conditions in the jail. Around the same time his symptoms began, the city of New Orleans was hammered hard by Hurricane Isaac. Farrell told me that the storm had pushed ankle-deep sewage water into many of the cells.

Read the full article about cruel and unusual neglect by Lois Ratcliff at The Marshall Project.