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'Deliberate indifference': NY state put imprisoned man's life at risk, judge rules
By
Ryan Kost
and
Samantha Max
Published Jul 31, 2026
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By
Ryan Kost
and
Samantha Max
Published Jul 31, 2026
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The New York state prison system failed David Blanding for years, and those failures put his life in jeopardy, according to a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, in a recent opinion, found prison officials acted with “deliberate indifference” in managing medical care for Blanding, who has bladder cancer and is incarcerated at an upstate prison. They failed to provide him prescribed medicine, to transport him to appointments and even to inform him of a new cancer diagnosis, the ruling found.
In a stinging rebuke of the prison bureaucracy, Kaplan issued an injunction ordering the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to develop a treatment plan for Blanding, 61, who is currently being held at Green Haven Correctional Facility, a prison about 70 miles north of New York City. He also instructed the department to report to the court every two weeks with updates on his care.
“If prison officials are allowed to remain deliberately indifferent to his medical needs, Blanding risks dying of cancer (or at the very least enduring additional bouts of severe symptoms),” the judge wrote.
Nicole Whitaker, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said she could not comment on an incarcerated person’s medical treatment or pending litigation. In court papers, the state argued that Blanding’s medical care “has hardly been neglectful as he paints it,” adding there was insufficient evidence of ongoing constitutional violations or fault by individual prison officials.
Kaplan’s opinion and court documents describe an overwhelmed prison bureaucracy struggling to provide care for an aging population amid persistent staffing shortages, failing to provide even basic treatment in the face of life-threatening diagnosis.
“It just should never have to come to this,” said Stephanie Panousieris, one of Blanding’s attorneys. “Up and down the chain of command, there were failures.”
Incarcerated people are not required to receive the same quality of care as “well insured and financially capable people” outside of prison, Kaplan wrote in his opinion. The state is obligated, nonetheless, he wrote, to meet the serious medical needs of the people in its custody. Not doing so could cause “physical torture or a lingering death” and violate constitutional protections from cruel and unusual punishment.
David Blanding, left, and his wife, Gloria Blanding, in the early 2000s.
Courtesy of Gloria Blanding.
Kaplan found Blanding had been denied medicine doctors prescribed to manage his bladder cancer. He said they failed to transport Blanding to the procedures meant to catch his cancer from recurring, as it eventually did, multiple times. And when a biopsy revealed he also had cancer in his prostate, the system failed to inform him.
Instead, Blanding learned of his new diagnosis nine months after it was discovered, from his own attorneys, according to the judge’s ruling. By the time doctors performed a biopsy, it had advanced to the most dangerous grade measured.
The record, Kaplan wrote, was “nothing short of disgraceful” and evinced an “appalling and deliberate indifference to the physical health of a man committed” to the state’s custody.
State Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens who chairs the Senate's crime victims, crime and correction committee, said in a statement that she was not surprised Blanding had to go to court to get the care he needs.
“Judge Kaplan’s injunction against [the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision] confirms what incarcerated individuals, their families, and advocates have been telling us for years — that withholding medical care from incarcerated New Yorkers is an egregious, but common abuse of power taking place in our state prisons,” she said.
‘He was ignored’
Blanding was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2019, about eight years into an 18-years-to-life sentence for attempted first-degree burglary, according to the judge’s ruling and incarceration records. In January 2020, he underwent surgery to have a tumor removed from his bladder, according to court records.
A couple months later, a urologist prescribed an immunotherapy treatment to reduce the chances of the cancer returning, followed by a screening procedure to see if he would need additional care. A second doctor agreed with the treatment plan, according to court papers.
But Blanding never received the immunotherapy treatment, Kaplan said. He didn’t get the screening procedure anytime soon, either. When Blanding repeatedly asked medical providers at the prison why he was not receiving the care his doctor ordered, “he was ignored or told that he was getting all the care he needed,” the judge wrote.
In the years that followed, Blanding experienced a repeated cycle, according to court papers. Doctors would recommend treatment to address his cancer or prevent it from spreading, prison officials would delay his care and his condition would worsen.
The judge’s opinion lays out a series of emails, letters, medical parole applications and phone calls from Blanding’s attorneys to prison officials, urging them to provide the medical care he needed or release him from custody so he could seek it on his own.
Panousieris said the years Blanding has spent advocating for better treatment while his health deteriorated has been “exhausting.” Not knowing exactly what was happening in his own body has also taken a psychological toll, she said.
“ He wants to make it home to his wife,” Panousieris said. “He was certainly not given the death penalty.”
In the years that Blanding has awaited care, the attorney said, the likelihood of his cancer metastasizing has increased by multiple levels.
“The hope is that we're not too late in him getting the treatment he needs desperately to prevent that from happening,” she said.
‘Struggling’ to provide care
Kaplan said he felt the need to intervene in Blanding’s case because prison officials as high up as state Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello have “knowingly disregarded significant risks to his health on numerous occasions” and failed to act in response to his grievances and communications from his attorneys over the years.
While officials say they have been more attentive to Blanding’s needs since he filed a lawsuit in June, Kaplan said there was a “virtual certainty” that the lapses in treatment would continue without a court order.
“Mr. Blanding’s case is not isolated and is a stark reminder of the critical importance of oversight, accountability, and advocacy in protecting the health and dignity of incarcerated individuals,” said Bernadette Brown, an attorney with the Center for Appellate Litigation, who is also representing Blanding.
Access to healthcare is one of the top concerns incarcerated people share when monitors from the Correctional Association of New York visit prisons across the state, said Sumeet Sharma, director of policy and communications at the prison oversight organization.
Sharma said the group has visited Green Haven, where Blanding is incarcerated, multiple times in recent months, following an uptick in deaths in the prison.
“We saw repeatedly during these prison visits that the facility itself was struggling with being able to provide adequate medical care to the population,” he said.
During monitoring visits, leadership at Green Haven have told monitors that incarcerated people were regularly missing outside medical appointments, because the prison didn’t have enough staff to transport people to and from visits to the doctor, Sharma said. Staffing shortages across the prison system also cause delays for more basic, in-house medical care, he said.
Some correctional facilities have specialized medical units to provide advanced medical care, Sharma said. But Green Haven doesn’t have one of those units, he said, and not everyone with serious medical needs can get a spot in the prisons that do.
Panousieris said she hopes Blanding’s case is unique, but she worries it reflects a broader breakdown in medical care in state prisons. She said many of her incarcerated clients have told her about the struggles they have faced to get treatment. Even more incarcerated people have no support system to advocate for their care, she said.
“I worry for all of not only my incarcerated clients, but for all those who are in the custody of the State of New York and completely reliant on them — to keep them alive on the most basic level and treat them like human beings,” she said.
Tagged
new york state
public safety
Ryan Kost
Ryan Kost is a reporter on the day-of news desk, where he covers breaking news and writes enterprise stories about jails, courts, prosecutors and government accountability. His work focuses on the public institutions that shape life in New York. Before joining the newsroom, he lead a multi-part investigation with Columbia Journalism Investigations and New York Focus into how New York prosecutors handle wrongful conviction claims. He's also been a staff writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, The Associated Press and The Oregonian. Got a tip? Signal: ryankost.20
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Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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