PANTON’S JAIL REQUESTS

Almost two months after being jailed for her alleged role in the multibillion-dollar fraud uncovered at the investment firm Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL), Jean-Ann Panton had a list of requests for prison administrators.

Panton was given a wheelchair and placed in a dorm located at “one of the newer areas” of the South Camp Adult Correctional Centre in St Andrew after her arrest in February, acting superintendent at the facility Jacqueline Roach Spencer disclosed on Thursday.

Panton, a former wealth advisor at SSL, who resides at Millsborough Avenue in St Andrew, is one of 22 inmates being housed at the correctional facility and is reportedly recovering from a surgery conducted last August.

But according to an April 5 letter to Roach Spencer, she requested that a bedside light be placed in her room “so that she could read at nights”.

That request is “still under discussion because we have to take into account other inmates who may be affected after lights out”, Roach Spencer disclosed in the Home Circuit Court on Thursday.

The contents of the letter were disclosed in court during a second failed bail application by Panton’s attorney, Sylvester Hemmings.

The first bail application was refused in late February.

Panton also requested an extra mattress for her bed and wanted a television set closer to her dorm, away from another one used by other inmates.

The mattress was supplied, but Roach Spencer said the request for the television was still under discussion.

She requested, too, that her bed be relocated because it was beside a bathroom and “the stench was unbearable”.

This request was accommodated, the acting superintendent said.

Roach Spencer conceded, during cross-examination by Hemmings, that “it wouldn’t be far-fetched” that Panton sometimes had to use a bucket of water to flush the toilet in her dorm when it malfunctioned.

On a specific diet

The prison boss said Panton also complained that she was sometimes served foods – like hard-boiled eggs – that she did not eat and meals she could not consume.

“She said the porridge was too sweet and she had difficulty eating same,” the prison official told the court.

Panton was on a specific diet, Roach Spencer said, and kitchen employees were given a list of things she should not be served, including watermelon, ripe bananas, carrot, and cucumber.

She also requested physiotherapy, and this was facilitated on Tuesday, according to the acting superintendent.

Panton also wrote in the April 5 letter that her blood sugar level was low and she feared she was “on the verge of a stroke”.

Dr Jermaine Whyte, a sessional medical officer employed to the Department of Correctional Services, has testified that Panton’s blood sugar levels twice dropped to 2.9 but said there was nothing in her medical records to show that she had suffered a stroke or a seizure event while incarcerated.

In the letter, Panton heaped praise on the prison medical team, writing that they had done “an amazing job” following up on her medication and that she was “grateful”.

But her attorney, in his submission during the second bail application before Justice Vinnette Graham Allen on Thursday, said doctors and prison staff at the South Camp Rehabilitation Centre “have not convinced this court that Panton’s health is in capable hands”.

Graham Allen, in her decision to refuse bail, concluded that prison administrators “have gone to lengths to accommodate” Panton.

“I do not find that this submission is borne out by the evidence of the doctor,” the judge said, referring to Hemmings’ assertion.

Graham Allen, however, ordered that the accused be assigned a nursing aide during the course of her incarceration.

Panton is charged with breaches of the Larceny Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Forgery Act, and the Cybercrimes Act in relation to the alleged fraud.

She is scheduled to return to court on June 15.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com