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Norma Hummingbird
Lack of medical care within the prison system

Norma Hummingbird’s case is certainly atypical, but then again all of The Justice Project cases are, in one way or another, unique. Norma was a long-term inmate in the women’s prison. She had heard about the work of The Justice Project from other women whom we had helped. Norma had no complaint about her technical guilt. She had a very real and immediate complaint, however, about the lack of medical care available to her in the state prison system. She had been, very belatedly, diagnosed with a terminal case of ovarian cancer. Sadly, she could get neither treatment not appropriate pain management within the prison system.

This turned out to be the Project’s only experience with the prison system’s program for the humanitarian release of terminally ill inmates. Due to the work of a great many caring people, Norma was released and allowed to live her final days first under the watchful eye of Hospice in Arizona and then finally in the care of her family in Needles, California. The web of people who gathered to help Norma along the way would be its own extraordinary story, complete with voluntary consultations that spread from healthcare providers as far away as Missouri and others closer to home.

The Project has one other humanitarian release case in process but we recognize that this is an area in which the talents of our students and other volunteers are rarely well suited.