Relatives of a prisoner at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute are worried he won’t survive to see his release date next month.

Demitrius Manderfield, 29, stopped receiving monthly blood transfusions for a rare genetic disorder in January, after prison officials accused him of attempting to contact a healthcare worker who had been administering the treatments, according to medical records, emails and court filings reviewed by WFIU/WTIU News.

Read more: How federal prisons stonewall grievances

"I signed my own death certificate when I did that," Manderfield wrote in a letter from the restrictive Special Housing Unit, or SHU, the prison's segregation unit. "I know I'm not going to make it, if I feel this bad now."

The night before, he said, medics took him to the emergency room at Terre Haute's Union Hospital, about eight hours after a cellmate alerted that he had collapsed after complaining of severe chest pain and asking for help.

Manderfield wrote that after suffering a seizure, staff placed him in a wheelchair and wheeled him to a holding cell, where he remained from midnight until medical staff clocked in the next morning. After finding he had dangerously low blood pressure, they transported him to the hospital, Manderfield said.

Aside from one period 10 years ago while in custody in Michigan, where he later pled guilty in federal court for his role in a scheme to sex traffic a minor, Manderfield has generally been able to receive one of the mainstay treatments for sickle beta thalassemia, a rarer form of sickle cell disease, over the past nine years in multiple federal prisons, including at Terre Haute, according to relatives.

The discontinued procedure, red blood cell exchange, is used to remove the misshapen, sickle-shaped cells and replace them with healthy ones that can more efficiently transport oxygen throughout the body.

Without the treatments, the faulty cells build up and can restrict blood flow. When that happens, patients may experience severe pain virtually anywhere in the body, among a variety of other symptoms. Patients also become more susceptible to life-threatening conditions such as strokes or seizures.

"You have to do it consistently. Otherwise, the effect is lost," Dr. Andrew O'Brien,  an adult hematologist and co-director of the Lifespan Sickle Cell Disease Center at Indiana University and IU Health, said in an interview.  "Over time, those transfused cells are going to die off, and the patient's own cells are going to come back."

Exactly how often transfusions are necessary varies patient by patient but a typical schedule might be every four to six weeks, O’Brien said. Establishing the correct schedule is an important element of treatments, and that is determined by ongoing, consistent evaluation by a team of sickle cell specialists, he said. That level of care is not available in most hospitals. In prison, it's nonexistent.

"That becomes particularly challenging in terms of being able not only to get them appropriate treatment, but also to be able to have good communication and good insight into what they're dealing with day to day, being able to get them access to appropriate emergency care, appropriate urgent care," O'Brian said. "We'll bring them into clinic to give them pain treatments or evaluate them and try to change the course of their acute pain episode so that they don't end up in the hospital. But those types of interventions are generally not available to people who are incarcerated or even people on parole or house arrest. It can be very challenging."

O'Brien also said that its was difficult for patients to advocate for themselves, especially when they experience acute pain episodes, which Manderfield said he was experiencing more often as time goes on without the transfusions.

"I just got two letters from Meech saying he is in so much pain that he can barely write. It’s so heartbreaking," his mother Tia Sumner said, using a nickname.

Sumner said that her son's condition has continued to worsen after months without the transfusions, which had been administered at Union Hospital.

"If he skips one, we are talking excruciating pain crisis, strokes, acute chest syndrome," she said. "That blood literally keeps him alive."

She said Manderfield had received the treatments every three weeks "like clockwork" since he was four years old, even while serving his sentence in Terre Haute, with only a handful of exceptions. Corrections staff documented that Manderfield refused one of his transfusions in September 2025, for example, and one responded to messages from Sumner asking what had happened.

Recently, however, she said it had been more difficult to advocate for her son because staff stopped allowing the two to communicate by phone or email despite the past nine years of having access to both means of communication. They also removed other relatives' phone numbers and email addresses, Sumner said, apparently over her role in the unauthorized communication incident.

Sumner said the prison launched the investigation after she sent a message to a Facebook friend of one of her son’s healthcare providers, at his request.

“ I made a grave mistake that I didn't realize was a mistake,” Sumner said. “He called me and he said, ‘Mom, I met this nice girl up at the hospital that I go to. I would love to be able to get her a phone number.’ And in my mind, ‘Oh, that's so cute. I'm so glad you made it, found someone,” she said. “I found a friend of hers and I sent her a message and said, ‘My son would love to get your friend's phone number.’”

Sumner said she received a letter about a week later informing her of the case, and the prison cut off her access to phone and email communication in March.

Sumner said that after learning more about prison policy, she now understands why prisoners aren't permitted to communicate with people on social media, especially those they encounter in a healthcare setting. But she said it doesn’t justify withholding medical care from someone with such a serious illness.

“You didn't sentence him to death, you sentenced him to 10 years,” she said. “I don't think you get to play the judge, jury and the executioner, you know?”

By April, Sumner was communicating with her son only through written letters, which sometimes took weeks to be delivered in either direction. Sumner said that his description of the chest pain and seizure in April reminded her of episodes he suffered when he was younger and his condition was not as stable.

“When he said that he had a seizure, it was pretty bad. In his letter, basically, he was telling us that he was going to die and this was it. And he wanted us to know that he loved us,” she said.  “He thinks this is the end for him, honestly.”

Choking back tears, Sumner read from a letter in which Manderfield apologized for the crime that landed him in prison and for the distress his confinement has continued to cause his family. He wrote that he wished he had had the opportunity to prove to them that he had changed and was a better person now.

“I’m literally lost, I feel terrible,” Manderfield wrote in that letter, dated April 8. “If I feel this bad now, there is no way I’m gonna last three more months.”

Manderfield's projected release date is July 13.

Read more: Inmate serving life dies at Terre Haute federal prison

A prison bureau representative did not directly address inquiries from WFIU/WTIU News about Manderfield’s condition or explain why his transfusions were being withheld. In an unsigned email, the sender provided a link to a website with instructions for filing a Freedom of Information Act request.

“I trust this has addressed your concerns,” the person wrote.

Compassionate release denied

Last month, U.S. officials shared some details about the situation in court filings, much of it under seal. The filings were in response to a request for compassionate release under the First Step Act, filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan, where Manderfield received his sentence.

Judge Judith Levy denied the motion on procedural grounds, saying Manderfield exhausted internal remedy procedures. But she left open the option for him to make a new request after finishing the grievance process.

Before ruling, Levy ordered the U.S. attorney's office in Detroit to explain discrepancies between its representations about care Manderfield was receiving and the prison bureau's records of his medical care.

The U.S. attorney, citing information obtained from the prison bureau, had informed the court that Manderfield was not being denied transfusions and that, moreover, he had three hematology appointments scheduled for May, June and July. But Levy noted that prison medical records showed all three appointments had been discontinued. She ordered the U.S. attorney to explain.

In response, the U.S. attorney acknowledged that the appointments had been cancelled, again noting that the information had been provided by the bureau.

In its second response, the bureau quoted the bureau directly, confirming that it had cancelled the appointments but that it was only after an outside provider determined Manderfield no longer needed transfusions.

“Inmate Manderfield does have sickle cell thalassemia and does receive regular transfusions. These transfusions often occur during monthly visits to the local hospital, but this is not always necessary,” the response said.

It said a local specialist determined Manderfield did not need transfusions during an appointment in March. And in April, during his visit from the SHU after collapsing in his cell, the same specialist made the same decision.

The bureau's response concluded: “As a side note, Manderfield was being investigated for inappropriate communications with medical staff. However, outside providers at Union Hospital would not be aware of that investigation unless informed directly by Manderfield. Furthermore, ongoing investigations have no bearing on whether inmates receive medically necessary care.”

Cathy Knapp contributed reporting.