Inmate dies in apparent suicide
Woman’s hanging spurs calls for action
A 22-year-old inmate at MCI-Framingham, the state’s prison for women, was found hanging in her cell Sunday night in an apparent suicide, and two other inmates attempted suicide over the weekend, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction said yesterday.
Christina Morando, who was serving a sentence of two to six years for an armed assault conviction, was found with a ligature around her neck at 10:41 p.m., said Diane Wiffin, the spokeswoman.
Morando was taken by ambulance to MetroWest Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Two other female inmates also made suicide attempts that resulted in their hospitalization, Wiffin said. The department declined to identify the inmates or provide details, citing medical confidentiality. She declined to say whether the actions were related.
Wiffin said the Department of Correction was investigating all three cases and had notified the local district attorney’s office, as is routine.
Morando’s apparent suicide was at least the third this year in the state prison system. The department reported no suicides last year, but a spate of 15 suicides from 2005 through 2007, as well as a number of attempts, alarmed advocates for inmates and spurred the Disability Law Center to sue the Department of Correction in federal court in March 2007.
The suit, which is pending, alleged that hundreds of prisoners who were seriously mentally ill were held 23 hours a day in inhumane conditions, leading to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and suicides.
Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said the three cases in Framingham indicate that the prison system still has a serious suicide problem, even though it has made progress.
“Certainly, the Department of Correction has made wonderful first steps, but there are nowhere near an adequate number of beds for mentally ill prisoners,’’ said Walker, whose group has pushed for mentally ill inmates to be housed in special treatment units and not in solitary confinement.
No information was available on whether Morando or the other two women had histories of mental illness.
Morando, whose last address was not available, was sentenced to prison on Jan. 7 for being an accessory before the fact in an armed assault with intent to rob and commit murder, Wiffin said. She was eligible for parole next May because she had received credit for seven months she had spent in jail before being sentenced.
Coincidentally, several state legislators had planned to tour the Framingham prison Monday with Mary Beth Heffernan, undersecretary for criminal justice in the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety, when prison officials called to cancel because of the suicide.
One of the legislators, Representative Kay Khan, a Newton Democrat, said the lawmakers plan to visit the prison tomorrow, even though Heffernan cannot attend, because they are concerned about whether budget cuts are affecting mental health services.
Khan, a psychiatric nurse, said that 60 percent of the inmates at Framingham receive mental health treatment and that she is worried that the state’s strapped finances could be putting prisoners at risk.
“I’d like to see if that’s played any part, and if that has some relationship to what’s happening,’’ she said.
There were two other known suicides in the prison system this year.
Richard J. Sharpe, a convicted murderer, was found dead, hanging from a bedsheet in his cell Jan. 5 at the state prison in Norfolk. On Jan. 26, another convicted murder, Donovan Walker, was found hanging by a T-shirt in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.
Saltzman can be reached at
jsaltzman@globe.com. 
