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State seeks to force feed man serving life for murder who is refusing to eat

A judge today agreed to let the Department of Correction force a feeding tube up the nose and then down the throat of a convicted 70-year-old murderer on a hunger strike, but said he will give the inmate a chance to explain why he should be allowed to continue refusing all but small sips of water at a hearing next week.

Edward Starling was convicted of second-degree murder in 1976 of killing his girlfriend's 22-month-old child by throwing her across a room in her home on Wentworth Street in Dorchester two years earlier, when he was just 19. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. He has repeatedly been denied parole.

On Oct. 8, according to the correction-department request, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Starling started refusing food and is now so weak he will have to be transported to Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain by ambulance from the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Lancaster for the procedure to have the gastric tube installed.

But that's only a short-term solution, in part because of the risk of infection, the department says. Longer term, if Starling continues to refuse food, the department says it would want to have a doctor cut a hole in his abdomen for a more permanent "percutaneous entero-gastric" tube into his stomach.

The department says it's not going to just let Starling kill himself through starvation because of "his perception of injustice and despondency regarding his incarceration status" and asked permission to use "reasonable force" to get Starling into an ambulance and then undergo the procedure - which the department said could include putting him in restraints and administering a sedative.

The Commonwealth has a legitimate interest in preserving [Starling's] life, and in maintaining the "ethical integrity of the medical profession." ... The Commonwealth, and particularly the [commissioner of correction], also have a significant "interest in upholding orderly prison administration.

Superior Courts have previously granted orders allowing for the use of reasonable force to proved medical treatment to other competent inmates refusing such treatment thereby creating an imminent risk of death.

Starling first became eligible for parole in 1991, but his requests for parole have been repeatedly denied.

In 2013, he told the state parole board that he was "high on acid" and was having "a bad trip" and thought the girl was a "spider monkey" trying to hurt him, so he threw her across the room and possibly kicked or stomped her. When he realized she was dead, he went to a neighbor to seek help and told police the girl had fallen out of bed twice, her eyes began to roll back in her head and she began to choke. He was arrested and attended his first court hearing, then fled to Newark, NJ, where police found him under an assumed name and brought him back here for trial.

In 2019, however, he told the parole board had completed a series of programs that made him understand what he did and to control his previously violent behavior, that he was a regular Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous member and had earned three bachelor's degrees and two associate's degrees.

The toddler's mother testified in support of parole, as did Bishop William Dickerson of the Greater Love Tabernacle and Milton Jones of the Peace Institute. The Suffolk County District Attorney's office and then Boston Police Commissioner William Evans, however, opposed parole.

The board noted his self improvement and educational achievements, but said it remained convinced that Starling "is not yet rehabilitated."

Complete Department of Correction request (1.7M PDF).
2019 Parole Board decision (145k PDF).
2013 Parole Board decision (458k PDF).

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Comments

… unusual punishment.

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So is murdering someone

He's 70, what's the point?

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27

He’s not getting out. Just let him starve to dead, he’s 70!

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of parole if it's never granted? The documents say the victims family supported parole, yet it was still denied!

Just let him starve if he wants to starve. What benefit is there to society in subjecting this guy to forcible medical procedures?

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Man. My biggest sympathy in this situation goes to any decision makers in Dept of Corrections, Courts, doctors, whatever.

There are no good options. I would not want to have to try to sleep after deciding to begin force feeding, nor do I think “the system” will let him kill himself.

It’s easy to critique politicians and bureaucrats. They have my sympathy & appreciation on this.

That's his problem.
Give him his meals and our conscience as a society is clear.

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He will break. Keep giving him his meals. Humans have eaten each other when facing starvation. He won’t last

Via Rogers orders, though both those processes require the person to be incapacitated... not mearly chosing to do something that the authorities disagree with, which seems to be the case here.

whatever else I feel about Mr Starling's decision, I am bothered by a court restricting his bodily autonomy.

The 13th Amendment makes prisoners slaves.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

So the court can treat the person as a slave, to do with what the court and Commonwealth and it's representatives and employees and prison contractors choose.

Once in prison government is nearly God. Of course in states such as Texas where judicial murder is valued highly the state plays God.

The petition for the court order is offensive and whoever wrote it deserves to be behind bars:

“The Commonwealth has a legitimate interest in preserving respondent’s life, and in maintaining the”ethical integrity of the medical profession.”

George Orwell would see this vulgarity for its doublespeak.

The only possible interest the Commonwealth can have is to continue causing the man to suffer the punishment of imprisonment. God forbid if the man’s example should inspire other prisoner’s to accept death via starvation. How would the Commonwealth continue to function if people were willing to die instead of spending the rest of their lives in prison? There is also a question of whether there is a monetary angle. How does losing a prisoner to death impact the finances of whoever runs the prison?

Forcing food into a body when the person is mentally able to choose to go without food cannot be seen as medically ethical. It is a violation of the man’s body; that make it non-sexual rape.

But so long as the man remains a prisoner he is a slave for the Commonwealth to use and abuse him save for when the Commonwealth can’t get away with it.

This kind of vulgarity and violence is to be expected in states such as Georgia. Not Massachusetts.

For prisoners, just like rest of us