'Weaker and weaker': Donna Adelson lawyer blasts her treatment in jail, asks for home arrest
An attorney for Donna Adelson, the latest person charged in the 2014 murder of Dan Markel, alleged in court documents that she has been subjected to "cruel and inhumane conditions" in her two-plus weeks at the Leon County Detention Facility.
Marissel Descalzo, Adelson's Miami attorney, asked in a motion Tuesday that Donna Adelson be moved from solitary confinement into the general population or alternatively that she be placed on house arrest. Among other things, Descalzo said Donna Adelson has been sitting "naked" on a mattress in a solitary cell and given no eating utensils.
Descalzo wrote that after Adelson arrived at the jail on Nov. 20, she was put in the infirmary under direct supervision before being moved to a small solitary unit with "a toilet, a sink, a mattress on the floor and a dirty blanket. She has requested a book or Bible but has not been given anything and has been forced to eat her food with her hands."
The day after Donna Adelson's arrival, her lawyer said a mental health official asked her about medicine she was taking but she "felt uncomfortable" because she couldn't see the person's face and wasn't sure they were a health-care professional.
"When Donna made her concerns known, the official told Donna that Donna 'is a fancy white lady who murdered her son and now thinks she has rights,'" the defense motion says. "The official joked with the other guards about this outside Donna's door."
Further, Descalzo wrote that since that interaction, some jail staff have treated her with "cruelty," including denying her blood pressure medication and preventing her from showering for days at a time. She said Donna Adelson has been allowed to call her husband, Harvey Adelson, only once and that she has not been able to call her lawyer.
The State Attorney's Office has not yet filed a response to the motion.
Angela Green-Sherrod, a spokeswoman for the Leon County Sheriff's Office, said the agency' doesn't comment on ongoing legal matters per policy.
"We cannot discuss the specific details of the pending motion at this time, but the Leon County Detention Facility takes the care, custody, and control of everyone in our facility very seriously," Green-Sherrod said in an email.
Pretrial release for Donna Adelson may be unlikely given the gravity of the charges against her, her attempt to leave the country just before her arrest and comments she made about suicide.
She was arrested Nov. 13 as she and her husband tried to board a flight out of Miami International Airport with one-way tickets to Vietnam. She was held at a Miami jail before she was transported to Tallahassee.
Adelson is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation in the murder-for-hire killing of Markel, her former son-in-law. Her son, Charlie Adelson, a Fort Lauderdale periodontist, was convicted in the murder a week before her arrest after an eight-day trial at the Leon County Courthouse.
Markel, a Florida State law professor, was fatally shot in the garage of his Betton Hills home on July 18, 2014, the victim of a murder-for-hire hit. It happened in the wake of a bitter divorce between Markel and his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, Donna and Harvey's daughter and Charlie's sister, and battles over custody of their two kids.
The two hit men, Sigfredo Garcia and Luis Rivera, and Katie Magbanua, Charlie Adelson's ex-girlfriend and his link to the killers, have all been convicted in the murder.
Defense motion: Donna Adelson 'sits in her cell naked all day'
Descalzo wrote that despite the fact Donna Adelson hasn't been convicted of a crime, jail officers were "intentionally punishing" her and violating her constitutional rights.
"Instead of providing her actual medical care, the jail has shown deliberate indifference to Donna's medical needs ... and letting her become weaker and weaker as she sits in her cell naked all day with nothing but a mattress on the floor," she wrote.
She said her client faced harsh treatment even before arriving in Leon County. After she was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami, she was placed in an isolation cell in a psychiatric unit.
She had no access to clothes, cups, silverware, books, blankets or toiletries and couldn't use the phone to contact her family, the motion says. After two psychological evaluations, she was moved within 96 hours to general population, where she was allowed to make more calls.
When she was transported from Miami to Tallahassee, she was placed in the back of a vehicle with no water, Descalzo wrote. She tried but couldn't get the attention of officers to tell them she needed water and a restroom break.
"Approximately 4-5 hours into the trip, when the officers finally checked on her, Donna was shaking, dehydrated and unable to stand up or move," Descalzo wrote. "As a result, the officers had to call paramedics to a rest stop."
In the week between Charlie Adelson's conviction on Nov. 6 and Donna Adelson's arrest, she mentioned in monitored jail calls that she was considering fleeing to a non-extradition country or possibly taking her own life.
However, Descalzo said Miami jail officials confirmed that she didn't need to be in a direct observation unit and that there was no health or other reason she couldn't be moved to "a normal part of the jail." She asked for an independent psychological evaluation that would allow her to be moved out of solitary confinement.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Donna Adelson lawyer blasts her treatment in jail, asks for home arrest
