Multi-million dollar jail death settlement may be heard by Sebastian County Quorum Court

Sebastian County Quorum Court members are expected on Tuesday (Aug. 20) to hear about a proposed settlement in the August 2021 death of Larry Price Jr. resulting from “cruel and inhumane” treatment while an inmate in the Sebastian County Detention Center.

A lawsuit was filed Jan. 13, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas seeking a jury trial. Sebastian County and Turn Key Health Clinics, the company contracted to provide medical care at the jail when Price died, were named as defendants.

In a June 10, 2024, filing, Turn Key Health asked for a settlement hearing.

“The parties have conferred, and wish to request a settlement conference as expeditiously as possible to attempt to resolve this case before the next round of depositions, if at all possible with the Court’s and available magistrate judges’ schedules,” noted an excerpt from the filing.

Based on a July 5, 2024, letter from attorney Eric Heipt with Seattle-based Budge and Heipt, the law firm representing the Price family, there was a July 8 settlement hearing presided over by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Ford. The letter from Heipt noted that judgments in similar cases range between $95 million and $8.3 million.

Settlement terms are unknown, as are any details about who will discuss the matter during Tuesday’s meeting or if Sebastian County Sheriff Hobe Runion will be part of the discussion.

‘NOTHING IS FINAL’
Talk Business & Politics was alerted late Friday that Quorum Court members had received physical “confidential” documents at their respective homes for the Aug. 20 meeting that were not part of the set of public meeting documents on the county’s website. The agenda item, “Discussion of Jail Incident,” is the first item under new business. Sebastian County Judge Steve Hotz said supporting documents were not available at the time the agenda was posted online.

The documents, obtained Friday by Talk Business & Politics through a Freedom of Information Act request, are a collection of federal court filings, state records and other items already in the public domain. (Talk Business & Politics has not been able to confirm if the documents received through the FOIA request match the documents sent to Quorum Court members.)

Hotz said a vote on a settlement is not on the agenda, but a Quorum Court member can ask for an item to be voted on during a meeting. Sources have told Talk Business & Politics that a proposed settlement is around $6 million, with the county paying half and Turn Key Health Clinics paying half. Sources have also said a jury trial could have resulted in at least a $20 million judgment against the county and Turn Key Health.

Hotz would not discuss settlement terms.

“I am not going to discuss this case any further without review by our attorney. Nothing is final and negotiations are still open. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize our attorney’s ability to negotiate what is best for our taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

PRICE DEATH BACKGROUND
In August 2020, Price, who had a history of mental illness and had several interactions with law enforcement, entered a Fort Smith police station where he was alleged to be verbally threatening and pointed his fingers in the shape of a gun. He was charged with making terroristic threats and booked into the Sebastian County Jail with bail set at $1,000.

Unable to make bail, Price would remain in the county jail, often in solitary confinement, for more than a year. He would die on Aug. 29, 2021. The details about his confinement and death garnered national headlines.

“According to the complaint, staff logged more than 4,000 entries for well-being checks between Aug. 1 and Aug. 29, 2021, when he died with the same entry, ‘Inmate and Cell OK.’ Ten more identical entries were logged after Price had been pronounced dead,” noted this detailed report on Jan. 14, 2023, from The Washington Post.

The lawsuit filed by Heipt noted in part: “Larry Price suffered in the tortured throes of his untreated mental disorder for months on end as jail healthcare and security staff watched him waste away – apathetic to his life-threatening medical and mental health needs and to the cruelty of his confinement. He died not only because of their deliberate indifference and neglect, but also because of systemic deficiencies in the Sebastian County Jail’s policies and practices, which put severely mentally ill people at significant risk of serious harm or death. The constitution mandates better treatment of society’s most vulnerable citizens.”

In an interview with 40/29 News, Runion blamed the system.

“Sheriffs have to deal with people that they should not have to deal with. We need to look at changing legislation so we do not have to keep these people in the jail. That is not a proper facility for these types of issues. Sheriffs are the one person involved that can not get them out of jail. Prosecutors and judges, possibly the state hospital, those are the three people or organizations that can get people out of jail. The sheriffs have no say in it,” he said.

Catherine Fontenot, a corrections officer from Louisiana who was hired by Heipt to review the case, said Price’s treatment at the hands of Sebastian County officials and Turn Key Health was “cruel and inhumane.”

Her report included the following findings.
• “Throughout Mr. Price’s year-plus confinement, no medical or mental health providers conducted segregation rounds or checks on Mr. Price. The practice of the Turn Key medical staff at the Sebastain County Jail was not to perform such checks, and the county did not arrange for any mental health providers to do so. Consequently, the only people who regularly observed Mr. Price were detention deputies with no medical or mental health training and who were merely looking for signs of life.”

• “Detention deputies documented performing four wellbeing checks an hour on Mr. Price throughout his year-and-ten-day detention (as required by policy). Each entry was the exact same: “Inmate and Cell OK.” They repeatedly logged that Mr. Price was okay despite sixty-nine incident reports recording his increasingly irrational, paranoid, delusional, and unhygienic behavior and despite his obvious weight loss. No referrals were made to get medical or mental health assistance for Mr. Price—even when he was so obviously malnourished that he looked like a starving, grossly emaciated person.”

• “Tragically on August 29, 2021, Mr. Price was found unresponsive, his eyes open, lying motionless in standing water and his urine. Even in the hours and minutes leading up to when they found Mr. Price in this condition, detention deputies continued to document that he and his cell were ‘OK.’”

• “There was no meaningful investigation done in this matter by the Sebastian County Sheriff’s Office and no meaningful internal review of the death in custody initiated by the Sebastian County Detention Center’s Jail Administration. … In my professional opinion, the excess inmate population and staffing shortages at the Sebastian County Jail during Larry Price’s detention was a recipe for disaster and fell far short of what is acceptable in the correctional industry.”

• “I find the Sebastian County Jail’s failure to conduct a meaningful investigation into the death of Mr. Price shocking. As a jail administrator, it’s almost inconceivable to me. It demonstrates a lack of leadership, it violates basic correctional norms, and it shows a disregard for the health and safety of inmates going forward. In addition, it indicates that the practices followed during Mr. Price’s detention were the jail’s standard practices and that the actions taken by the detention staff were taken in accordance with policy and the expectations of the jail’s leadership.”

• “What happened to Larry Eugene Price, Jr. was cruel and inhumane. Numerous individual and collective failures occurred throughout his pretrial detention. In my professional opinion, the actions, omissions, and practices described in this report were grossly below the standard of care in the field of corrections.”