ALIVE IN SPIRIT:

[A] transcript of the visit published on Wednesday offers a disturbing look at life inside MDC, and suggests that mistreatment of detainees goes far beyond the recent electrical issues. While heat and electricity did return to most units earlier this week, those who met with the judge described immense suffering inflicted by corrections officers, and an "incredible fear of retaliation" among anyone who spoke up.

According to the transcript, which was recorded by a stenographer and released by the court, several detainees told Judge Torres that they had medical problems that had been ignored by jail staff--in some cases, life-threatening issues that were exacerbated by the dark and freezing conditions they were forced to endure during last week's bitter cold snap.

On the seventh floor, the judge described observing "abundant water" and "black, blotchy mold" on the ceiling of a jail cell. She spoke to the man incarcerated in that cell, relating that he was showing her "a very dingy yellowed blanket that is obviously water damaged" and also "his left arm that has a rash on it, and he says it's from the water dripping." Several others told Torres that they were not given adequate clothing or blankets during the heat outages, with one person saying it was like "sleeping under a waterfall."

Another detainee said that he didn't receive his medication for an entire week, causing him to pass out in his cell this past Sunday after attempting to call for help. He accused security officials of jamming the alert button, and purposefully ignoring his cries for assistance. "I still haven't been seen yet," he told the judge. "I am still in pain."

(During the hearing earlier in the day, a medical technician at MDC, Rhonda Barnwell, had seemed to admit that the jail was failing to provide adequate health care to its 1,600-person population. She added, "If the media didn't come, we'd still be in the same situation.")

The judge also met with a detainee who said his cellmate experienced a mental breakdown during the heat outages. "He asked for attention because when the power was off the emergency buttons were not working," the man said. "The officers were walking around only every hour or so. When we finally got the officers' attention...I said the man is suicidal, and I think they took it as a joke."

The man added that he "literally had to take the noose out of his cellmate's hand [as] he was trying to kill himself."

When the judge said that she was sorry to hear that, the man replied: "Thank you for being worried about us, ma'am, and treating us like human beings."

United States District Judge Orrin G. Judd, who ordered the cleanup of the Willowbook State School for the Mentally Retarded, died yesterday, apparently of a heart attack, in Aspen, Colo., where he was attending a judicial seminar. He was 69 years old.

In his order affecting Willowbook, issued in 1973. Judge Judd had directed the state to remedy the "inhumane and shocking conditions" that he said prevailed at the Staten Island institution for the retarded.

In a more recent order reflecting his sense of compassion for those living in institutions, he ordered last January that the city's Houses of Detention in Queens and Brooklyn provide individual cells for detainees awaiting trial. [...]

An associate of the judge said last night that he had agonized over some of his recent cases.

"I know he found, just as all 'judges do that sentencing is the most difficult part of their duties," the associate said. "He was very mindful of the fact that people are cut off from normal living when they are sent to jail."

Judge Judd had developed a custom of visiting jails and detention facilities during Christmas recesses to familiarize himself with the institutions to which he was sometimes forced to send defendants.

Among the facilities the judge had visited during his career on the Federal bench was Willowbrook.

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