A federal jury began hearing testimony Monday in a lawsuit blaming an inmate's 2011 death on Saline County's failure to provide medical care in the jail and jailers' failure to seek medical help when the man, arrested hours earlier during a traffic stop, told them he couldn't breathe.
The lawsuit, which also names former Sheriff Bruce Pennington, further alleges that jailers used excessive force to restrain Casey Babovec, 30, of the East End community as he sweated profusely and lost control of his bladder and bowels as a result of swallowing methamphetamine as he was being pulled over.
Attorney James Swindoll of Little Rock told jurors in opening statements Monday to carefully watch a videotape from a camera in the jail that shows an officer pulling Babovec out of a holding cell and throwing him to the ground, then shows five other officers piling on top of him while a sixth "dives in and tases him."
Swindoll said the jailer who used a Taser on Babovec sat on top of him for several minutes until he lost consciousness and several jailers then dragged the unconscious man into another cell, where they dropped him face first onto the floor and one of them hit him.
By the time paramedics were called, it was too late, Swindoll said. He said the state medical examiner later determined that the methamphetamine was a factor in Babovec's death but that his death was caused by the combination of force used against him and people sitting on top of him, which compressed his cardiopulmonary system.
Swindoll is representing Robin Babovec, Casey Babovec's mother, in the wrongful-death suit that seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Attorney George Ellis, who is representing the county, Pennington and 10 jailers and supervisors, called Swindoll's words "bluster and carrying on." He told jurors that Babovec was to blame for swallowing two plastic containers of methamphetamine that an autopsy showed burst at some point after Babovec was arrested in the early afternoon on April 13, 2011.
Ellis also told jurors that before the jailers took Babovec out of his cell and restrained him at about 5 p.m., one of them had let him out of the cell he shared with eight to 10 other prisoners to let him shower after he lost control of his bowels and asked for help. At that point, Ellis said, Babovec was "not in distress."
As soon as Babovec was returned to his cell after showering, he walked up to another prisoner in the cell and "cold-cocks him," Ellis said. He said that although jailers couldn't see directly into the cell, one of them watched the attack occur on a video monitor and yelled for the other jailers to get Babovec out of the cell.
"They got him out, and they had to cuff him," Ellis said. "This guy was a danger to himself, other inmates and the jail staff." Ellis said Babovec resisted the jailers and "was incredibly strong. ... What was their alternative?"
"The proof will be he was not asphyxiated," Ellis said, noting that Babovec was still breathing when the jailers got off him and dragged him into the other cell, but at some point after that, a female jailer noticed he wasn't breathing, and others called 911 and started CPR.
Ellis said that the jailer accused of hitting Babovec was actually "trying to pull him over on his side," which jailers are told to do in the event someone throws up, which Babovec did.
He told jurors that Babovec wouldn't have been any better off "if they'd had a Mayo Clinic wing" at the jail.
Despite Ellis' insistence to the contrary, a witness for the plaintiffs testified that as she waited to be booked into the jail, she saw a jailer kneeling on top of him and heard Babovec say, "I'm not resisting. I can't breathe."
The witness, Carolyn Ann Voyles, who was accused of shoplifting, testified that the jailers "were talking about how he'd gone to the bathroom on himself and calling him names. ... It sounded like they were joking around, laughing."
She said she initially gave a different account of the ordeal to a state police officer who took her statement inside the jail because two jailers stood outside the room where she gave her statement and she feared for her safety. In the initial statement, she said Babovec charged at the officers and was "out of control."
Another witness, an inmate who had been jailed for several months on drug charges, also testified that sheriff's deputies stood outside the door, intimidating her, while the state police investigator interviewed her.
She said the jailers clearly "knew he was on meth."
The trial resumes today before U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker.
Metro on 01/27/2015