Jury trial set in civil rights case over Sebastian County inmate’s dehydration, malnutrition death

The entrance of the Sebastian County Jail. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Hank Layton)
The entrance of the Sebastian County Jail. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Hank Layton)


FORT SMITH -- A jury trial has been set in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the family of a man who died at the Sebastian County jail in 2021 from acute dehydration and malnutrition.

The trial will be at 9 a.m. Jan. 8 before U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes in Fort Smith, according to an initial scheduling order filed Feb. 14.

The estate of Larry Eugene Price Jr. of Fort Smith filed the lawsuit Jan. 13 suing Sebastian County; the Oklahoma City-based Turn Key Health Clinics, which provides medical services to the county jail; Jawaun Lewis, a psychiatrist and Turn Key's director of psychiatry and mental health services; and Christeena Ferguson, a nurse and former Turn Key employee responsible for providing medical services to jail inmates, according to court records.

The lawsuit asserts Price -- a Black man who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and other mental health disorders, as well as intellectual developmental disorder -- had his federal constitutional rights violated by being deprived of necessary medical and mental health care while held at the jail as a pretrial detainee, leading to his wrongful death. It also accuses the defendants of medical negligence and violating their correctional standards of care under state wrongful death and survival statutes.

The lawsuit also lists as defendants 20 unidentified correctional officers or medical staff at the jail who worked either for the Sheriff's Office or Turn Key and were responsible for the health, safety, security and welfare of the inmates there.

Turn Key, Lewis and Ferguson each filed responses to the lawsuit Feb. 9 in which they denied accusations against them and requested the court dismiss the lawsuit, according to court records. Sebastian County did the same Feb. 13.

THE LAWSUIT

Price was arrested Aug. 19, 2020, and charged with first-degree terroristic threatening, a class D felony, after reportedly shouting and cursing at officers at Fort Smith's Police Department, according to the lawsuit. His bail was set at $1,000.

Jail medical and security staff were familiar with Price and his history of mental illness through the multiple instances in which was detained at the facility in 2019 and 2020, which was typically for disorderly conduct and trespass-related charges. Price had been detained there from July 7 to Aug. 11, 2020, during which he was prescribed anti-psychotic medication.

"Records from that recent pretrial detention indicate that he was hearing voices, delusional, depressed, disoriented, confused, speaking rapidly, experiencing psychomotor agitation and struggling to understand his surroundings," the lawsuit states. "His mental symptoms were described as 'severe' and likely to have a '[m]arked impact on [his] ability to function satisfactorily in the [jail] setting.'"

Price was moved into a segregated housing area, solitary confinement, after being booked Aug. 19, 2020, the lawsuit states.

Lewis prescribed Price anti-psychotic medication after a mental health referral Sept. 1. However, although Price sometimes accepted the medication, he would more often refuse to take it over the following three months. The lawsuit states no Turn Key medical professional tried to meaningfully address this issue as Price continued to exhibit increasingly severe symptoms of mental illness.

Lewis discontinued Price's medication following an appointment Nov. 24 in which Lewis reportedly noted Price refused to take them and be seen, according to the lawsuit. Price reportedly didn't receive any more medication or mental health treatment or care after that point, leading to further mental deterioration that included eating and drinking progressively less.

Ferguson went to check on Price on Jan. 28, 2021, after being notified Price was consuming his own feces and urine, the lawsuit states. She saw he was "noticeably thinner," and although she told staff to monitor his food and fluid intake and output daily, there's no indication she alerted a higher-level provider about Price losing 35 pounds or that jail medical staff did anything in response.

The lawsuit further states staff only maintained a food and fluid log on Price sporadically over the next three months, with no such monitoring after April 25.

"In May 2021 a Sebastian County Circuit Court judge ordered Mr. Price to undergo a psychiatric assessment to determine whether he had the capacity to form the culpable mental state required to prove him guilty of the crime with which he was charged and to determine whether he was mentally fit to proceed to trial," the lawsuit states.

"That assessment, however, never occurred. And in the months that followed, Mr. Price continued to languish alone in his cell -- further descending into the throes of his untreated psychosis."

Price was "visibly malnourished and starving to death" by Aug. 1 , the lawsuit states. However, despite the fact staff was ordered to check on his well being every 15 minutes or more, no one summoned medical help, alerted a supervisor or documented Price's condition.

Jail staff found Price lying unresponsive in his cell in a pool of standing water and urine Aug. 29 , according to the lawsuit.

He was pronounced dead at Mercy Hospital in Fort Smith.

Price, who weighed 185 pounds when he was booked into the jail a year earlier, was estimated by hospital personnel to have weighed 90 pounds, the lawsuit states. A physician diagnosed him with cachexia, a wasting syndrome, while a medical examiner concluded his death was caused by acute dehydration and malnutrition.

Initial Response from Sebastian County

Steve Hotz, Sebastian County judge, said Jan. 16 the Sheriff's Office was doing an internal investigation into Price's death.

Sheriff Hobe Runion said in a video statement Price's 2021 death was only in the news due to a "lawyer from Seattle, Wash." suing county taxpayers.

"That lawyer made a lot of allegations, and out-of-state reporters have repeated those allegations as if they were all true; they're not," Runion said.

Price's autopsy showed he weighed 120 pounds when he died, rather than the estimated 90 pounds the lawsuit cited, according to Runion.

"Let me make one point clear: the jail staff gave this inmate plenty of food and water every day," Runion said. "The jail medical staff were in regular contact with him. The autopsy said the inmate died with covid. All of us want to know more about what other factors may have led to this tragic death."

Dan Shue, county prosecutor, wrote in a letter to Arkansas State Police on Jan. 5, 2022, he believed no criminal charges could be filed in connection with Price's death after reviewing the agency's investigative file into the matter.

An autopsy by the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory determined the cause of Price's death was "acute dehydration and malnutrition" as the lawsuit stated, but with additional, contributory causes of "covid-19 positive at time of death and schizophrenia," according to Shue. It concluded the manner of death was "natural."


Jail capacity

The Sebastian County jail was built for 260 beds in 1994. An expansion in 2007 increased this number to 356 beds.

Source: Sebastian County

 



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