Susan Balfour filed a lawsuit alleging prison doctors withheld her terminal cancer diagnosis. (Screengrabs from WJTV 12 News/YouTube)
An inmate in Mississippi alleges in a lawsuit that prison doctors did not reveal her terminal breast cancer diagnosis until it was too late.
Susie Balfour, 62, was an inmate at the Mississippi Department of Corrections in 2011 when she began to complain of pain in her breasts and developed breast cancer. Days before she was released about a decade later, after serving 33 1/2 years for manslaughter in the death of a police officer, prison officials told her she had Stage 2 breast cancer, the lawsuit said. She later learned from a specialist outside the prison that she had terminal Stage 4 cancer. Her cancer has metastasized and is present in her lymph nodes and bones.
“My cancer is now untreatable because of what they did to me, and I’m standing up to prevent this from happening to others inside — many of whom are my friends,” said Balfour in a statement from her lawyers. “Even when we are locked up and stripped of our rights, we should still have the right to know what is happening inside our bodies.”
The lawsuit names the contractors that provide health care to prisoners at the facility — Wexford Health Sources, Centurion Health, VitalCore, Merit Health Central, and multiple physicians and nurses. The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for various civil rights and Eighth Amendment violations.
The contractors did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Law&Crime. The Mississippi Department of Corrections doesn’t comment on active litigation.
Balfour was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to death, which was overturned in 1992 when the Mississippi Supreme Court found her constitutional rights had been violated. She made a plea deal on the lesser charge of manslaughter, her attorneys said.
For 10 years during her incarceration at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, the defendants ignored the presence of suspicious masses in Balfour’s right breast, court documents said. Prison health care staff didn’t conduct, order, or refer her for further diagnostic exams, the lawsuit said.
“Ms. Balfour’s cancer could have been treated more effectively had the defendants taken her repeated requests for medical care seriously,” the lawsuit said. “She faces a much worse prognosis from which she is unlikely to recover.”
The lawsuit alleges contractors were incentivized to withhold necessary care under contracts that set up a “financial reward” to delay or deny health care to incarcerated individuals, said another Balfour attorney, Andrew Tominello, in a statement.
“They withheld critical care from Ms. Balfour for a decade, and that suggests they were hoping she would die in prison so they wouldn’t have to pay for the treatments she needed,” he said. “What they did to this woman to increase profits is beyond callous, it’s pure evil, and they must be held accountable.”
Prison doctors first detected breast cancer in Balfour when she went in for her mammogram at the prison in 2011. A biopsy wasn’t done until November 2021. She didn’t learn about the diagnosis until days before she was released from custody on Dec. 27, 2021, when prison medical staff told her she had Stage 2 cancer.
After undergoing testing outside prison, she learned she had Stage 4 cancer. The cancer had spread to both breasts, lymph nodes, and thoracic spine, and her cancer was spreading and present in several other bones and liver, her lawyers said. It had spread throughout her system to the point that surgical intervention, such as a mastectomy, was not an option, the lawsuit said.
“Consequently, Ms. Balfour’s condition is now untreatable and terminal,” court documents said.
Another Balfour attorney, George Hollowell, said her medical providers violated their oath to do no harm.
“Ms. Balfour served her time for what she did, but by withholding this diagnosis, they handed her a death sentence,” he said.
The lawsuit alleges that at least 15 other inmates have cancer and are not receiving necessary lifesaving treatment.
Pauline Rogers, the co-founder of the Rech Foundation, which works with the women in the prison, said many of them work with chemicals, including Roundup, to clean the prison, and many of them now have cancer.
“These are human beings that deserve a second chance in life,” she said. “Instead, these companies are withholding care to make a buck off the women they’re leaving to get sick and die.”
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