Prison death leads to $1 million settlement
Suit filed against guard who ignored seizure alert
State taxpayers paid $1 million to settle the case of a man who died in a Milwaukee prison in 2011 after a guard ignored a warning from the man’s cellmate that he was having a seizure.
Officials at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility knew that Jeremy Cunningham, who had a heart condition, had been using a prescription painkiller and alcohol. But when Cunningham’s cellmate pressed an
emergency button to sound the alarm about the seizure, a guard dismissed Cunningham’s seizure as “snoring” and hung up the emergency call.
About two hours later, paramedics found Cunningham dead at 34. His estate filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of his now 15-year-old son in December 2016, bringing the case against the guard in his individual and official capacities.
Cindy Telford, Cunningham’s mother, said the money will help her grandson but not provide the accountability she wanted.
“At least my grandson will be able to go to college but I don’t feel anything has been done,” Telford said. “But when you lose your child, that never goes away. It’s been six years but it never goes away and I don’t think it ever will.”
The June settlement was obtained through an open records request by the Journal Sentinel.
In another case, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday that state taxpayers paid $55,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by a woman who says she was kissed, mistreated and ultimately fired by her female supervisor at a prison in Racine. The supervisor still has a similar $97,500-a-year management job for the state.
State Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said the agency is “committed to accountability.” But prior to this article running, he couldn’t give specifics on what changes the state prison system has made to ensure similar deaths — and seven-figure settlements — didn’t happen in the future.
After the story posted online Tuesday, Cook said the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility now conducts breathalyzer tests of all inmates and takes inmates under the influence of alcohol or drugs to a hospital to be cleared medically before admission. Across state prisons, facility leaders are now expected to move through facilities more often, check with line staff and be aware of the specific needs of inmates in a given unit.
Telford said she was skeptical that much had changed.
“I just don’t understand … there seems to be no accountability in that department whatsoever.” Cindy Telford mother of Jeremy Cunningham
“I just don’t understand … there seems to be no accountability in that department whatsoever,” said Telford, who now cares for her grandson.
On June 21, 2011, Cunningham turned himself in on a parole violation and went into the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, telling nurses there he had used both alcohol and the opioid painkiller Percocet, according to the lawsuit. Cunningham also suffered from a heart condition known as Wolff-Parkinson White syndrome — a potentially serious condition that causes rapid heart beats.
The Milwaukee prison is run by the state but takes around-the-clock admissions of offenders for violating their sentences in a similar fashion to a county jail.
The nurses decided Cunningham should be checked every four hours for three days to be sure he did not show signs of drug or alcohol withdrawal, according to an internal memo of the district attorney’s probe obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which first reported on Cunningham’s death in a 2014 investigation “Deaths in Detention.”
Five days before entering the Milwaukee prison, Cunningham had suffered a seizure and checked himself into West Allis Memorial Hospital where he showed symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
At the prison, one of the instructions for alcohol monitoring for Cunningham stated: “Send to ER via ambulance if convulsions/seizures occur.”
But no one checked on Cunningham, even after his cellmate, Ishmeil Washington, felt the bunk bed shaking violently and pressed the emergency button, the lawsuit says.
On the first try, no one responded. On the second call, corrections Sgt. Jay Suttle answered but didn’t listen to Washington when the offender said that Cunningham was having a seizure and was having trouble breathing.
“Without bothering to undertake any visual assessment and having ignored the emergency seizure report, Sgt. Suttle told Mr. Washington that Mr. Cunningham was ‘snoring’ and barked at him to go back to sleep, and he then hung up the emergency call,” the lawsuit reads.
As part of the lawsuit, the state disputed that Suttle had been told about the seizure. The state did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
But the lawsuit says that Suttle’s tenure at the secure detention facility included 12 written reprimands and that he was suspended without pay five times from 2007 to 2012.
“Significantly, on four separate occasions Sgt. Suttle was caught sleeping and snoring while assigned to the exact emergency medical call duty that he was responsible for on the night Mr. Cunningham died,” the suit says.
Suttle retired in July 2012. Corrections officials have not said if he was disciplined.