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COSTA RICA |
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Costa Rican Woman
Awaiting Extradition In New Jersey Jail Sues
Over Cancer
By Samantha Henry, Associated Press
NEWARK, N.J. - A Costa Rican woman who was
on an international most-wanted list after a
1997 slaying until her U.S. arrest last year
has sued over what she says is a lack of
health services in New Jersey - so severe
that her advanced stage of breast cancer
went undetected.
A lawyer for Maria Magdalena Pacheco Bolaños,
39, said his client had gone from a young
woman who panicked and fled Costa Rica after
the death of a prominent newspaper executive
to a mother of three living in a $1 million
home on Long Island, N.Y., where she ran a
successful landscaping business.
Attorney Gil Garcia alleges Pacheco's former
boyfriend was responsible for the slaying.
Pacheco is charged as an accomplice.
The international police organization
Interpol caught up to the woman in April
2008. She was arrested on Long Island and is
in the Hudson County Correctional Center in
New Jersey pending extradition to Costa
Rica.
Garcia said his client had not had access to
a doctor or undergone medical tests for 10
months of her detention, despite repeated
complaints to medical staff that she felt a
lump in her breast.
When an immigration judge ordered Pacheco
taken to a doctor, advanced breast cancer
was diagnosed, and she had a mastectomy,
Garcia said.
"It's not so much the issue of a latent
diagnosis," he said, but it's tantamount "to
cruel and unusual punishment under the
Constitution. If you commit cruel and
unusual punishment - and it could be
tantamount to a death sentence in this case
- they have to pay for it."
The suit was filed Wednesday in federal
court in Newark.
Jim Kennelly, a Hudson County spokesman who
handles jail inquiries, said he would look
into the complaint, but had no immediate
comment. A representative of the Costa Rican
consulate in New York said inquiries about
the case must be submitted in writing and
would be referred to government officials in
Costa Rica.
Garcia denied the lawsuit was an attempt to
delay his client's extradition. He said she
was cooperating with U.S. and Costa Rican
authorities on her transfer. Meanwhile, he
said, her requests for timely radiation
treatments have been delayed.
"Inmates have many more medical issues than
the general population, and receive much
worse medical attention," Garcia said. "They
are in jail for a reason - there's no doubt
about that - but to deny them the proper
medical care adds an extra layer to their
punishment that is not contemplated by the
law."
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