Suit: Man Rendered Impotent After NY Jail Doctors Ignored 6-Day Erection
A former inmate at the Manhattan Detention Complex claims in a lawsuit that damage sustained to his penis from a six-day erection that went untreated while he was in custody has left him permanently impotent. Rodney Cotton had been taking Risperdal—an antidepressant that is known to cause painful and prolonged erections known as priapism.
Cotton, who was locked up after a parole violation in 2011, told DNAinfo that he saw two doctors who both simply gave him Tylenol and ice packs before he was taken to Bellevue Hospital and given surgery, four days after he initially made a complaint. One of the doctors is also being sued for allegedly telling another inmate to throw part of his severed finger in the trash, rather than attempting to preserve it.
After the surgery, Cotton was given stitches that were supposed to be removed in 10 days, but Dr. Landis Barnes—the severed finger guy—told him they would dissolve on their own. By the time they were removed—about a month later—“they had become embedded in the skin of his penis,” DNAinfo’s Rosa Goldensohn writes. According to Cotton’s lawyer, damage from the untreated priapism is so great that a prosthetic would not aid treatment of his impotence. “Honestly, I wanted to choke Barnes, because he destroyed me,” Cotton said of the ordeal, which seems like a pretty understated response.
DNAinfo reported last week that New York City will not renew its contract with Corizon, the medical company that handles healthcare in city jails. Considering the company’s horrendous track record, this is a very good thing.
