An inmate whose lawsuit led to tens of millions of dollars in improvements in Colorado prison conditions over a span of decades beginning in the 1970s, has died.
Fidel Ramos was sent to Denver Health Medical Center with brain hemorrhaging, according to David Miller, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who filed the class-action lawsuit in the late 1970s.
Ramos, who had been held at Sterling Correctional Facility, died Friday night of natural causes, said Katherine Sanguinetti, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections.
A series of lawsuits filed by the ACLU led to an era of prison reform that transformed Colorado’s prisons to more humane, modern facilities.
U.S. District Judge John Kane stunned state officials in December 1979 when he ordered prison officials to improve “Old Max” in Canon City or shut it down.
