By Boris Ladwig
Greensburg Daily News
INDIANAPOLIS — Decatur County Sheriff Greg Allen and jail employees are denying in court documents that they are responsible for last year’s death of a jail inmate.
M. Shane Satterfield, 38, died on the evening of March 17, 2014, after he stopped breathing at the jail.
The coroner’s report indicates that Satterfield, who was serving a two-week sentence for drunken driving, died of natural causes from complications of alcohol withdrawal.
However, a lawsuit filed by Satterfield’s mother, Lynn Brewsaugh, of Greensburg, alleges that Allen and jail staffers acted with “callousness or reckless indifference” to Satterfield’s medical crisis that ultimately resulted in his death.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis, alleges, among other things, that:
• Jail staffers failed to properly react to Satterfield’s deteriorating condition, which included hallucinations, talking to imaginary people and believing that his jail cell held a bomb.
• Jail staff placed Satterfield on a 30-minute medical watch but let hours go between checks.
• No doctor ever saw Satterfield that weekend, and medications were prescribed after the doctor received information via text messages.
• Officers took no action although Satterfield “broke his glasses, cut himself and even wrote ‘HELP’ on the wall with his own feces.”
Brewsaugh is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
In their 17-page response filed with the court, Allen, Jail Commander Darin Miley and other jail staffers wrote that they “supplied reasonable responses to (Satterfield’s) observable medical needs.”
While they admit some of the allegations in the lawsuit, including that Satterfield was not examined by any doctor during his time at the jail, they deny many other allegations. For example they:
• deny they knew Satterfield was suffering from serious complications that required emergency medical attention.
• deny they had been trained that delirium tremens, a severe form of alcohol withdrawal, required emergency medical attention.
• deny hours passed before anyone checked on Satterfield despite him being placed on a 30-minute medical watch.
• deny Satterfield displayed obvious signs and symptoms of delirium tremens.
• deny they “were deliberately indifferent to (Satterfield’s) serious medical condition and ignored (his) obvious need for emergency medical care.”
• deny their conduct lacked “the due care and diligence which prudent and reasonable jail officers would have displayed under similar circumstances.”
• deny their “acts and omissions … were done willfully, wantonly and maliciously and with such reckless disregard of the consequences as to reveal a conscious and deliberate indifference to (Satterfield’s) serious medical condition.”
• deny hey are responsible for his death because of their “reckless and/or negligent acts and omissions.”
Allen and the jail officers also wrote that they “are entitled to qualified immunity as their conduct did not violate (Satterfield’s) constitutional rights.”
And they deny that Brewsaugh “is entitled to any relief whatsoever.”
The case is set for an initial pretrial conference at 10 a.m. Feb. 24 at the Birch Bayh Federal Building in Indianapolis.