Child's Dying Wish Going Unfulfilled
Cancer patient wants to die with dad at her side but prison warden says no.
March 20, 2008 — -- For very sick little girls, sometimes a father can be the best medicine there is.
But the heartbroken family of a 10-year-old Nebraska girl diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, who is not expected to live through the end of the month, say the Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied the child's dying wish: that her incarcerated father be furloughed to be by his child's bedside when she dies.
Jason Charles Yaeger is serving the final year of a five-year sentence for a drug conviction in a minimum security prison camp in South Dakota, three and a half hours from his daughter, Jayci.
He has pleaded repeatedly with prison officials to honor the bureau's apparent policy of allowing furloughs and transfers under "extraordinary'' circumstances, but has been rebuffed time and again, he told ABC News in a telephone interview from prison today. He is scheduled to be transferred in August to a halfway house just an hour from his daughter's bedside, but prison officials have refused to transfer him early, he said.
Linda Asher, a spokeswoman for the bureau's Yankton, S.D., prison camp, declined to comment on Yaeger's situation, saying officials there wanted to make sure to protect Yaeger's privacy rights as an inmate.
But in a letter to Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska — dated Feb. 20 and obtained by ABC News — a regional director from the Department of Justice wrote that "although Mr. Yaeger believes his daughter's severe medical condition constitutes 'extraordinary justification,' a review of his case reveals this specific request was … reviewed … and denied … because his circumstances were not deemed to rise to the level of extraordinary."The congressman had requested information about the denials of the furlough or transfer.
Late Thursday, after abcnews.com published this story, the Bureau of Prisons released a statement saying that officials there "have reviewed inmate Yaeger's request for a compassionate release and have determined his situation does not meet the criteria..."
'I Am Sorry'
The irony of Yaeger's dilemma is not lost on him — he's in a race against time, trapped in a place where he's got nothing but time. He said he fears he'll never see his daughter alive again, and he said he knows he bears the blame for that.
"I am sorry for what I have done,'' he said. "I'm not asking to get out of my sentence — just to go from one place of imprisonment to another so I can be with my family.''
"Jayci is sitting in a hospice fighting for her life and [her mother] thinks she is holding on for me to get there,'' an emotional Jason Yaeger said.
"She wants me and needs me and I want to be there with her on her last day."
Yaeger said he's grateful for one saving grace — that he gets to talk to Jayci daily.
