Suit By 308-Pound Inmate Says He Is ‘Literally Being Starved to Death’

Criminal Justice

Suit By 308-Pound Inmate Says He Is ‘Literally Being Starved to Death’

Posted Apr 28, 2008, 07:55 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

A 308-pound inmate who lost more than 100 pounds since being jailed eight months ago on a murder charge claims he isn't being fed enough.

Broderick Lloyd Laswell, who is in an Arkansas jail awaiting trial on a charge of murder, seeks more food and hot meals, the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas reports. The county serves only cold food.

"About an hour after each meal my stomach starts to hurt and growl. I feel hungry again,” Laswell wrote in the pro se complaint. "The only reason we lost weight in here is because we are literally being starved to death."

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Posted by William WEbb - 4 months, 1 week, 2 days, 22 hours ago

Good fatty, i’m not going to pay my tax dollars to feed your fat lazy butt.
Posted by 3L - 4 months, 1 week, 2 days, 15 hours, 35 minutes ago

Cruel and unusual punishment? As always, there is an argument to be made - even if the prisoner is probably in better health after losing 100 lbs than he ever probably was. But forcing him to do so by starving ... bordering on crossing the line.
Posted by Bill - 4 months, 6 days, 7 hours, 50 minutes ago

Only a law student could even suggest that this might be “cruel and unusual punishment.” The warden is doing this guy a favor. He’ll probably end up being in better physical condition after losing a couple hundred pounds. There is no legitimate reason for anyone under 7 feet tall to weigh 400 pounds. At 308 pounds, sounds like he’s got some more weight to lose. He’s clearly not starving - they’re feeding him enough that he’s able to file a pro se claim.
Posted by Don't Hate - 4 months, 6 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes ago

I forgot! All fat people are lazy, right William Webb?
Posted by Hungry Hungry Hippo - 4 months, 6 days, 7 hours, 22 minutes ago

Another news source reported that the average daily caloric intake at this prison is 3000 calories. Big Boy Broderick needs to lay off the ho-hos.
Posted by Laura Dass - 4 months, 6 days, 6 hours, 51 minutes ago

It sure does stink to be charged with murder…
Posted by BIGLAW 1ST YEAR - 4 months, 6 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes ago

To poster #3:

Not all fat people are lazy, but 99.9999% of them are.
Posted by Luther MArtin - 4 months, 6 days, 6 hours, 26 minutes ago

He’ eating more than his victim is. Perhaps he should be more concerned about the recent SC ruling about lethal injections. Put him on hard labor too!
Posted by Gideon Newmark - 4 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 58 minutes ago

The real shocker to me is no hot meals! That county knows how to dish out the punishment. But I can’t really fathom where the right to food being hot figures into the Constitution.
Posted by Ryan R - 4 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 44 minutes ago

First of all he is an inmate...secondly he is a 308 pound man alleging starvation. It is absolutely hilarious if he actually believes someone will care. If he is convicted of the pending murder charge hopefully he will be put to death…then we’re talking serious wait loss.
Posted by Jess Casenave - 4 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 21 minutes ago

I agree with Laura, hahaha.
Posted by LD - 4 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 59 minutes ago

Could be the beginning of the next craze in dieting…
Posted by Jim Janus - 4 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 52 minutes ago

Which came first, the laziness or the fattiness? It’s a common chicken or egg conundrum.
Posted by LES - 4 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 43 minutes ago

If Mr. Laswell is acquitted of the murder charges or is convicted but avoids the death penalty, he will likely owe the county his life for providing him a relatively limited calorie diet. It is hard to accept that a diet of 3,000 calories a day is starving a prisoner.
Posted by Stuart - 4 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 35 minutes ago

"The only reason we lost weight in here is because we are literally being starved to death.”

I like that he is so big that he refers to himself as multiple people.
Posted by Lauren Ruff - 4 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 19 minutes ago

What a load. Literally. What a load. Benton County jails feed their inmates 2300 calories a day. I’ve seen their lunches personally, and they get things I can’t afford to eat every day! I think a Bologna sandwich, chips, and an apple are a pretty good lunch that many people wish they had. And he gets a similar lunch EVERY DAY! Most people would be happy to have lost 100 pounds. Maybe we should suggest this approach to Jenny Craig.
Posted by Chun Kee Boy - 4 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 1 minute ago

What a Loser! (Get it?)

I love comment #3 “all fat people are lazy....”
Give us a break, please--whether or not all fat people are lazy or not is irrelevant. This guy comes off as a complete loser. He’s innocent until proven guilty, but the fact that he is wasting his time filing a pro se complaint about the food when he’s facing a murder charge indicates that he is not the most industrious person out there…

I do find some comfort in the thought that should the Defendant, Mr. Tubb, be convicted of murder, and if Mr. Tubb doesn’t get fried like a piece of country ham, and if Mr. Tubb ever sees fredome again: he may think twice about any repeat violations because he will probably want to continue to stuff Twinkies into his fat face.

If he’s innocent, then my heart goes out to him for suffering needlessly--though the diet did him some good.
Posted by Teletubby - 4 months, 6 days, 4 hours ago

Fat chance!
Posted by Chun Kee Boy - 4 months, 6 days, 3 hours, 59 minutes ago

I know--two typos....I need glasses (or the ABA should make that comment box font bigger).
Posted by Adam - 4 months, 6 days, 3 hours, 53 minutes ago

The real travesty is that this guy is allowed to waste judicial resources asserting his rediculous complaints. What is he going to claim next? That the jail refuses to provide HBO with his cable television?
Posted by CALaW - 4 months, 6 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes ago

Holy cow! As everyone used to say about Subway’s Jared: if this guy lost 100lbs on 3000 calories a day - what the hell was he eating before?! I would gain 100 pounds eating that much. Overall this is good stuff - a break from this newsletter’s usual doom and gloom about every lawyer’s future status on the unemployment line. Maybe law grads can go to jail if they are going hungry. Ha!
Posted by Shocked and Awed - 4 months, 6 days, 3 hours, 42 minutes ago

They only serve COLD FOOD?

TRAVESTY!
Posted by sb - 4 months, 6 days, 2 hours, 4 minutes ago

Wow! Take a look at the link to the original story; there is a “Related Picture” on the right. And “Don’t Hate,” most people who callously use the term “fat” are referring to morbidly obese people. Morbid obesity is caused by consuming far more calories than expended, meaning that the morbidly obese individual eats a lot and doesn’t exercise. The callous term for lack of exercise is laziness. Also, the cure for obesity is diet and exercise, the unwillingness to do so being evidence of the individual’s sloth, indolence, and general lack of willpower. So, yeah, all fat people are lazy.
Posted by sb - 4 months, 6 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes ago

Oh, and here’s a concept: If you want to eat whatever you want, STAY OUT OF JAIL!!!! As a law clerk in Nebraska, I had the opportunity to respond to a complaint filed by an inmate who had requested special meals to correspond with his religious beliefs. The meals he was getting met his religious requirements, but he didn’t like them, so he called the ACLU. Here’s the law in this jurisdiction: the jail is required to feed you, and the jail is required to respect your religious restrictions. The jail is NOT required to give you whatever you want to eat.

I have an even better idea: shut off the A/C and see if fat boy still wants a hot meal.
Posted by sb - 4 months, 6 days, 1 hour, 32 minutes ago

http://services.co.benton.ar.us/dcn/inmateDetails.aspx?id=110578 has his mugshots. I think these are the “Before” shots, though; I wonder how “wasted away” he looks now at a “mere” 310 pounds.
Posted by Trop - 4 months, 5 days, 23 hours, 9 minutes ago

I can’t believe you people.

The article says he’s in jail (not prison) pending trial. He’s not a convict. He’s someone charged with a crime he may or may not have committed. If he had money, he would be out on bail right now.

In the same email that just sent out the link to this article, there’s the article about the 18th wrongful conviction overturned in Dallas County, releasing a guy who served over twenty years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. And that’s someone who was actually convicted by a jury of his peers. The guy in this article hasn’t been convicted of anything.

God forbid you are ever wrongfully arrested or arrested because you get on a cop’s nerves and you spend a weekend in jail waiting for your chance to see a judge. At that point, would you feel that you deserved to be punished by the conditions of your confinement simply for having been arrested?

Moreover, whether he’s fat or not, putting him on a standard, healthy diet while in jail (ie. somewhere he won’t be getting any exercise) should not result in him losing much weight at all, much less twelve and a half pounds per month for eight months.

To lose that much in a month, I have to be on Atkins and working out three times per week (and when I did that I was starting from just under 300lbs). Just the diet or just the exercise and I don’t lose anything. If he’s lost one hundred pounds in eight months, there’s more than the change from too much food to the proper amount of food as the cause.
Posted by CALaW - 4 months, 5 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes ago

Trop: “To lose that much in a month, I have to be on Atkins and working out three times per week (and when I did that I was starting from just under 300lbs). Just the diet or just the exercise and I don’t lose anything. If he’s lost one hundred pounds in eight months, there’s more than the change from too much food to the proper amount of food as the cause.”

This is not an accurate statement. 12.5 pounds per month on a healthy diet is a proper goal for the extremely obese! Even a thinner overweight person can lose about 8-10 pounds per month when eating properly and exercising a reasonable amount (such as 30-45 minutes brisk walking per day). Take it from a former personal trainer!
Posted by AC - 4 months, 5 days, 22 hours, 37 minutes ago

Thanks Trop for injecting some level of thought into what was becoming a rather snarky and nasty diatribe against obese people.

Losing 100 pounds in 8 months, while on a 3000 calorie a day meal plan takes a serious concerted effort. An effort this guy sitting in jail has not put forth and that sounds like are reason to be suspicious. It should cause any right thinking person to do a double take, regardless of his starting weight and the well-documented health risks of obesity,

Is it possible that the actual meals delivered are not 3000 calories? Could this be evidence of some sort of skimming scam? Have jail officials had him checked by a doctor? Usually that kind of rapid weight loss, without effort, is associated with a serious health issue.

For all of you thinking that the jail has somehow done him a favor for which he should be thankful - have you considered the extreme nature of the weight loss? A THIRD of his body weight in under a year. Even when one needs to lose weight - there is a safe way and an unsafe way to do it. The diference being that losing weight in an unsafe manner (like as rapidly as this guy is losing weight) brings with it a whole other set of potential fatal health risks. Remember Karen Carpernter anybody?

So okay - he’s lost 100 pounds and is no longer obese - right? He’s now 200 pounds and yet still complains of feeling hunger between meals and says he’s being starved. So do we wait until he loses another 100 pounds before we decide he’s entitled to any credibility regarding his own medical health?

I’m just sayin’ - there might actually be something to this. Remember the average layperson, and maybe even some of you, still think the McDonald’s coffee case was fakery too.
Posted by NCLawyer - 4 months, 5 days, 22 hours ago

"If he had money, he would be out on bail right now. “

So true. And while I’m also annoyed by the whining and lack of personal responsibility exhibited by most criminals, 100 pounds in 8 months seems like a lot. The comments here say more about the spiteful and moralistic attitudes of the posters toward fat people than anything else.

On a related note, I am tired of all these secular puritans who think that eating low fat yogurt makes them righteous. They’ve nearly ruined my chances of buying real yogurt at the supermarket, and their endless small talk about calories and “carbs” and their smug anecdotes about “being good” when they go to restaurants makes me wish they were in jail instead.
Posted by lars d ask - 4 months, 5 days, 19 hours, 3 minutes ago

100 lbs in 8 months off a guy who started at 408!!! pounds is not enough. At 408 pounds he burns more calories getting up from his bunk than Atkins-mama does writing that liberal-left garbage.
And who said “if he had money he’d be out”. Try “He spend all his money at McDonald’s.”
Posted by Large Person - 4 months, 4 days, 13 hours, 24 minutes ago

Comments #25-28:

I am a larger person--well over 6 feet and over 300 pounds.

What none of you seem to realize is that 5 pounds for a 350 pound person is equivalent to about 1.5 pounds for a 150 pound person. I weigh myself every day (almost) and exercise regularly. My weight can change 5 pounds in one day based upon what I eat and drink.

After I quit playing football in college, my weight went up rapidly (as I accustomed myself to eating less than 6-8,000 calories per day). When I went off of wheat, hydrogenated oils, and refined sugarsI, I lost about 50 pounds in about 3 months. Within a year, I was down 75 pounds. I did not starve myself at all. I ate spelt, organic sugar, and natural oils. Cakes, brownies, beer, etc. Just no garbage.

I started at about 375, not 418.

One more thing, this guy has lost one quarter of his weight, not one third, as mistakenly posted by “AC.”
Posted by MommyEsq - 4 months, 3 days, 3 hours, 37 minutes ago

Anyone who wants to see the “before” and “after” pictures and read his complaint can check them out on www.thesmokinggun.com
Posted by peck - 4 months, 1 day, 20 hours, 59 minutes ago

# 15 and others: “We” refers to him and other defendants - not himself in the plural. Before commenting it is generally wise to fact check - or at least read the full story instead of a summary. Here from the story is more: “Lawyers for capital murder defendant Manuel Enrique Camacho, who has been awaiting trial for almost two years, complained to a judge recently that he has lost significant weight while in the jail, going from 155 pounds to 118.”
Are you going to say he deserved to loose weight too without knowing anything at all about him? It is frightening that this emotional name calling comes from lawyers not lay people. Since when do the facts not matter? Who of you believes that our legal system allows us to judge people based on physical attributes?
Posted by angela - 4 months, 1 day, 16 hours ago

Are you kidding me? Sure, 3 meals a day would be a “starvation diet” to an fatty. Sorry that we can’t feed him the 5000 cals a day he wants...costs too much.

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