A federal judge on Friday dealt the state of Maryland two setbacks in its efforts to extricate itself from a decades-long federal lawsuit over healthcare and mental health services in Baltimore’s jails.

U.S. Judge Matthew J. Maddox rejected the state’s preferred choices for an “independent medical monitor,” or a doctor who will gauge its compliance with the terms of an eight-year-old settlement agreement in the case. Maddox also ordered the state to turn over contested records that could shed light on how often people with severe mental illness are getting out of their cells.

The pair of losses for the Maryland Office of Attorney General and its private law firm, Butler Snow LLP, came as the state has spent nearly half a million dollars on ratcheting up its legal defense in an attempt to extricate its corrections department from a federal lawsuit over healthcare and mental health services in Baltimore jails that dates back to the 1970s.

The story continues at the Baltimore Banner: Maryland must turn over contested Baltimore jail records, loses medical fight

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