Another Death at Allegheny County Jail (Corizon Health)

The daughter of a schizophrenic and severely ill Pittsburgh man who died in 2014 after 10 days at the
has sued the lockup, its top officials and Corizon Health, which runs the jail’s infirmary, alleging federal civil rights violations. Cynthia Jewett Whitlow of Birmingham, Ala. on Friday filed the 10-count suit in U.S. District Court, nearly two years after the death of her father, Clarence Jewett. The suit claims deprivation of civil rights, wrongful death, professional negligence and corporate negligence. It asks for compensatory and punitive damages. Named individually are jail Warden Orlando Harper and Deputy Warden Latoya Warren. 

Amie Downs, the county’s spokeswoman, today declined comment, saying the county does not discuss lawsuits. 

Martha Harbin, a spokeswoman for Tennessee-based Corizon, said today, “Due to the litigation cited and patient privacy laws, we are unable to provide you with a statement offering our perspective on the merits of this case.”

Pittsburgh police had arrested Mr. Jewett, 62, for screaming profanity on the street outside his house in the West End. He was taken to jail Dec. 16, 2014 and died Dec. 26 at UPMC Mercy. He was transported to the hospital after being found face down in his cell in his own vomit, according to the suit. But Mr. Jewett should have been seen by doctors for both physical and mental health problems long before that, both of which were apparent when he arrived at the jail, claim Ms. Whitlow and her attorney, Steven M. Barth, of Pittsburgh. 

“He wasn’t eating, he wasn’t communicating. It looks like they just put him in a room and said, ‘We’ll look at him.’ That’s it,” Mr. Barth said today. An autopsy showed that Mr. Jewett died from acute peritonitis due to esophageal perforation which, in turn, resulted from severe erosive esophagitis. The county medical examiner’s office ruled that his death was from natural causes. The suit claims that Mr. Jewett might not have been seen by any medical personnel at the jail until two days after his arrival, based on records Mr. Barth obtained. And when Mr. Jewett was seen, no physical was performed and “no history was acquired,” the suit claims. 

Records and the suit say that Mr. Jewett was seen by various medical staff, including a nurse practitioner, a mental health specialist, a psychiatrist and a physician assistant. He was given medication and observed. But all that was not enough, Mr. Barth said. Mr. Jewett did not eat. He sang, cursed and yelled. He became unresponsive. “He was in a full mental breakdown,” Mr. Barth said. “This was pretty extreme — a person coming in in this state.” All that behavior, according to Mr. Barth, clearly indicated psychiatric and physical problems and should have prompted the jail staff to send him to a facility where he could be properly evaluated and treated. The defendants “did not have a policy to deal with mentally incompetent inmates and only advocated the policy of putting them out of sight,” according to the suit. For several days, the suit said, Mr. Jewett was under close observation. 

But that ended for some reason on Dec. 22 even though Mr. Jewett “still was not communicating and/or eating or drinking,” the suit said. The suit claims that the jail and Corizon should have had a wealth of information about Mr. Jewett, including prior medical conditions and details about being hospitalized during a prior incarceration in the lockup in 2013. Ms. Whitlow’s suit called Mr. Jewett’s death “preventable.” It claims that the defendants had policies to not perform a timely review of an inmate’s medical history during intake and screening. As well, the suit claims, there was a contract between the defendants “which promote the policy and procedure to not send inmates out to outside medical providers...”