re:
“How Rikers Island and the failing justice system killed this public defender’s young, opioid-addicted client”
by Anisha Gupta
New York Daily News
October 21, 2017
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a letter to the editor:
This op-ed is heartbreaking; its implications are devastating.
To think that, at least two days after his death, the Department of Correction “has refused to provide [Selmin Feratovic’s] lawyers or his family with his cause of death.”
But, what is worse is what he was charged with: entering an apartment laundry room and trying to pry open the coin machine. For which he was, as Ms. Gupta notes, overcharged and incarcerated before trial for no justifiable reason. His bail was egregious. What he needed was treatment for addiction, which resulted from his being prescribed oxycodone for an injury in a motorcycle accident.
Is anyone listening?
Roger W. Smith
October 22, 2017
Note: Anisha Gupta, an attorney with The Bronx Defenders, is a public defender who was representing Mr. Feratovic.