By Jim Mustian
The Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — The family of an Orleans Parish jail inmate who died last year has filed a lawsuit against Sheriff Marlin Gusman, claiming jail officials failed to provide the man with vital medication for his sickle-cell disease.
The wrongful-death lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court, blames deputies for the death of Calvin Thomas, a 34-year-old who also suffered from Hepatitis C.
Thomas, who was also known as Calvin Deal, died at University Medical Center a year ago following a nearly two-month stay at the Orleans Justice Center.
A carpenter who grew up in New Orleans, Thomas had been awaiting trial on robbery and drug-related charges.
The lawsuit claims jail officials knew of Thomas’ medical condition yet failed to take him to the hospital even after he experienced prolonged leg pain and “complications” in his chest and abdomen.
It also claims Thomas was “attacked and stabbed” by another inmate and, on another occasion, was “choked by a security guard” inside the lockup.
Deputies took Thomas to the hospital about three days before his death. But the lawsuit alleges the inmate had been in a “sickle-cell pain crisis” a day before his admission to the hospital, complaining of pain in his abdomen, lower extremities, chest and back. Thomas’ condition worsened at the hospital, and he died on Nov. 15, 2015.
The lawsuit blames Gusman for a lack of staffing at the jail and alleges that malfeasance at the lockup is both condoned and encouraged “in the belief that (deputies) can violate the rights of persons ... with impunity, and that such conduct will not adversely affect their opportunities for promotion and other employment benefits.”
Philip Stelly, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit echoed concerns that Thomas’ family voiced in interviews shortly after his death. Thomas’ girlfriend of six years, Latasha Rogers, told The New Orleans Advocate last year that Thomas had called her and complained that deputies “hadn’t been giving him his medicine.”
“They weren’t worried about helping him,” said Rogers, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Thomas’ 4-year-old son.
Earl Montgomery, an inmate who said he shared a cell with Thomas, told the newspaper last year that Thomas, before he was taken to the hospital, had been “balled up in bed” complaining of chest pain.
“It was consistently days that he would not come out of his cell because he was having chest pain,” the inmate said. “He told me himself, personally, that he felt like he was about to die.”
Inmate health care was at the forefront of a class-action lawsuit by inmates that resulted in a federal consent decree outlining a detailed plan to improve conditions at the jail. The sheriff hired an outside company, Correct Care Solutions, to treat the city’s inmates.
That company also is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.