Inmate in ICU for sepsis; Scanner tipped off Fort Wayne mom
She still has no idea where he is with three weeks more in the hospital
BUNKER HILL, Ind. and FORT WAYNE, Ind ---On August 28, Daryl Keith Burnett told his mother, Cynthia Hall Gardner of Fort Wayne, he was having trouble breathing.
Burnett's health declined after hip surgery in November confined him to a wheelchair. He says he struggled to get medical followup treatment at Miami Correctional Facility.
Gardner reached out to prison staff but found that prison information conflicted with her son’s plea for medical attention.
The last time she visited him in mid-August, he was listing to one side.
Prison moms have ways to track their loved ones in an intractable system that depends on inmate’s tablets for communication, Facebook support groups and the whims and patience of prison administrators. Sometimes other inmates or "bunkies" provide crucial information.
The first inkling that her son was in serious trouble came from the Peru (Ind.) police scanner at 7:13 a.m. Sunday, August 30, about two days after he’d told her he was having difficulty breathing.
The Pipe Creek Township Volunteer Fire Department reported a “44 year old male unconscious/not breathing” transported from the Miami Correctional Facility.
Three weeks on, Gardner hasn’t spoken to Daryl and receives information from a prison nurse, not hospital staff. It was never the prison system or Centurion Health, Indiana’s much maligned medical provider for the prison system, who contacted Gardner.
In fact, the policy for getting in touch with friends and family of an inmate can be found in the statement below:
“It is not our policy to notify family members unless there is a death or imminent death. I do not have any specific information about his medical needs. Our contracted health care provider determined that outside medical care was needed. I have requested our Healthcare Services Administrator contact you with any updates they are permitted to share,” Deputy Warden of Re-Entry Aaron Smith wrote to Gardner on September 2.
Gardner is not able to speak to her son who was still on a feeding tube as of Monday and she still has no idea where he is.
The director of survivor support at Alive Community Outreach in Fort Wayne, Gardner has seen both sides of the criminal justice system. Daryl, her eldest son, has spent more than half of his life in prison for a two week period in 2003 when he went off the rails and accosted four women in various parking lots in Fort Wayne without actually physically touching them.
Her youngest son, Javon, was 26 when he was murdered at Summit Apartments on Parnell Avenue on Easter Sunday in 2018.
Javon’s killer got 85 years; Daryl, who didn’t kill anyone, was sentenced in December 2003 to 80 years by Allen Superior Judge John Surbeck.
“He got 85 years. Eighty, 85 years it’s the same thing. How did he shoot my brother 13 to 16 times? Overkill? And he got the same time I got and nobody got touched or hurt in my case,” Burnett said.
Online information from the Indiana Department of Correction indicates Burnett would be out of prison for three of his five charges. The earliest outdate for the two remaining charges is November 2040.
The question is this: with his physical deterioration will he even make it?
In two phone interviews this year, Burnett explained his spine discs are so completely degenerated he’d be hard pressed to commit the kind of desperate crimes for which he was convicted. He was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in his back, hips and neck.
“The pain is still here to this day. I have limited feeling in my arms down to my limbs and my hands. I’m in excruciating pain. It’s an analogy to have a crook in your neck. Imagine having a crook in your neck 24 hours a day,” Burnett said.
Burnett’s unraveling started with a permanent basketball injury in 2001. Basketball was his life. Like a lot of other kids, he dreamed of playing ball some day in the NBA.
After graduating from Paul Harding High School in 2000, Burnett got a scholarship to play at Owens Community College in Ohio.
The next year, he came home to Fort Wayne to join the basketball squad at Indiana Tech. Online, a roster from Dec. 9, 2001 shows Burnett wore the number 4 jersey and, in that game, played 11 minutes against IPFW.
Mid-season, a collision with a 6’10’ 300-lb center put him out of commission. Looking back, it was an injury that ruined his life, Burnett said..
After that initial injury at Indiana Tech, misunderstandings with coaches and players led to a downward spiral. His dream to play basketball became shattered.
He’s spent 23 years in prison now after spinning out of control for about two weeks in a series of bizarre and uncharacteristic criminal acts. The four incidents, all committed in broad daylight, spanned April 27, 2003 to May 9, 2003.
Messed up on booze and marijuana and armed with an unloaded pistol, he accosted four women in different parking lots at age 21. Although none were physically hurt, the incidents certainly caused fear and led to several charges in each case.
Burnett pleaded guilty to the first three cases, but took the fourth case to trial because the victim couldn’t positively identify him from a photo array and the only evidence against him was a partial fingerprint on the trunk of her vehicle.
Even with no prior felonies and no juvenile record, Burnett was convicted in December 2003 and sentenced to 80 years by Allen Superior Court Judge John Surbeck, now retired.
Gardner recalls Surbeck saying he was “going to make an example” out of Burnett, presumably for any others thinking of going through a mental health episode and off the deep end.
Three out of the four female victims forgave him, according to Gardner who attended his trial and sentencing.
The last victim just walked away, didn’t even take him seriously, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Since 2003, his life has been a series of legal maneuverings, some where he has triumphed. There’ve also been plenty of ignored motions and miserable medical care, a typical aspect of prison life, according to inmates interviewed by The Probable Cause and family members.
By this time, a seasoned prison legal expert, Burnett is out of regular appeals and denied clemency, which is a rarity in Indiana anyway.
Online sources say Gov. Eric Holcomb in 2022 issued three medical clemencies. In 2025, Gov. Mike Braun granted clemency to an Ohio woman for a 2013 prostitution conviction, but she wasn’t incarcerated when she received it.
Burnett is out of appeals in a cruelty worthy of a Tolstoy novel. The attorney for the last appeal told him of a denial on the last federal filing day, Burnett said, in effect, destroying hope.
“He (attorney Charles Leonard) didn’t even tell me my case was denied until the 30th day which forfeited my rights to even do an appeal,” Burnett said. That would have allowed him to then appeal to the federal court.
“In short, what he did was a violation and he kept me in prison forever.”
Then there is the clemency document Burnett said was forged because it was issued with Gov. Eric Holcomb’s signature only Gov. Mike Braun had been sworn into office.
Burnett has taken every IDOC course you can take, gotten an associate’s and a bachelor’s degree, completed every self improvement course. He has crafted hand made leather items and sold them to inmates and correctional officers. Although he is no longer capable of walking and working in maintenance, he also worked in that capacity as well as in the kitchen.
He was on the basketball team at the Indiana State prison before becoming too disabled to continue and played drums for the prison’s church.
Only a few months ago, on June 19, two prison officials signed a progress report recommending him for work release.
And yet reports sent to Allen County judicial officials showed numerous misconduct reports so that they felt he was still a threat to society. Work release was denied.
Such is the Kafkaesque nature of incarceration. He could be eligible for work release save for misconduct reports, some of which Burnett argues were overridden but never removed from his record.
There’s almost nothing left for him to do, but bang the drum for release from the hell of Hoosier incarceration.
At wit’s end, calling his mother, drafting legal arguments for himself and other inmates, his exasperation plays out in the argumentative approach he has with family members and friends and yes, prison staff.
In February, he was moved to a different cell at Miami and a physical altercation with the guards took place while he was in a wheelchair. That is documented. Eight bags of legal work from all his years of incarceration blew away in the wind, he said.
A childhood friend, Nissa Majors, Burnett’s long-time advocate, remembers him growing up as the big brother who took care of his siblings.
“This last year at Miami has been so abusive to him,” Majors said. “I can literally hear him breaking. He’s a strong man, trying not to cry.”
It’s not the Daryl she grew up and remembers him as a determined person who always had an air of confidence.
“He knew what his abilities were. Even in the times where he would fail and wouldn’t get first place. Even in those instances, he would go and try harder,” Majors said.
Burnett was the last person she thought would wind up in prison for so long.
“You couldn’t have paid me to believe that. Their mom kept them in church. He was a drummer in church. I know how he’s been raised.”
Majors was the one who talked to IDOC ombudsman, Charlene Burkett, about Burnett’s clemency request.
She believed there was a forgery because the name of the governor didn’t match the date.
“When the paperwork came back (that said) Governor Holcomb has reviewed it, I took that information, went to the ombudsman and said there’s foul play here.”
Majors found the conversation with Burkett “very interesting.”
Burkett replied “well it doesn’t matter. His clemency wasn’t going to be approved because he has this many conduct reports.” But Majors said there were conduct reports “that should have been removed.”
Gardner now prays for a compassionate release, given his physical deterioration. She calls his sentence “unreasonable. He didn’t kill nobody.”
Were he to ever get out he would need counseling.
“Yes” she said. “You’ve been behind bars like a dog in a cage.”
He’s been relocated on to different blocks in the prison, beat up by guards, put on blocks where he’s not supposed to be, taken months to get another tablet and officials don’t respond to emails, she says.
“I heard a guard talk to him like he’s cattle.”
The cost to house an inmate in Indiana is $32,538 annually, on the low end of state-by-state statistics published by USA Facts. But that number won’t factor in the cost of Burnett’s hip replacement in November and this subsequent estimated six-week stay at an unknown hospital.
Currently, he’s on a feeding tube, but apparently he can speak.
“They drained fluid off of his neck where he had rods,” Gardner said. “My fear is him going back to the prison and to the infirmary. The good news is he’s still at a hospital.”
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