Anthony Hunt, a man who died in jail in New Orleans last year from a drug overdoseHe was left in a flooded cell for the night before his death, despite expressing suicidal thoughts, suddenly collapsing in front of another detainee and mostly not responding when addressed by jail staff, according to a report. federal lawsuit filed on behalf of his family in May.
He was pronounced dead the next morning, June 22, 2021. He was 37 years old.
In addition to ignoring Hunt’s “obvious medical emergency,” the lawsuit says jail officers failed to properly screen Hunt for contraband when he entered the facility. Later, when jail staff found a small bag of drugs in Hunt’s cell, they removed it but quickly lost sight of it after placing it on a desk.
“The baggie of drugs then disappeared from the desk and…no one at OPSO was able to determine where the drugs had gone or who had moved them,” the suit alleges.
The lawsuit says that both the negligence of individual jail staff members, along with a broader failure by the sheriff’s office to fully staff the facility and to provide adequate training and supervision, contributed to Hunt’s death. , that his lawyers described his death as a “Suicide by drug overdose”.
“Mr. Hunt’s death was the result of multiple failures at OJC, including a failure to recognize and adequately respond to Mr. Hunt’s obvious medical emergency, a lack of adequate facility staff to ensure Mr. Hunt and Mr. Hunt’s failure to properly screen to prevent illegal drugs from entering the facility,” the lawsuit says. “These failures are a continuation of unconstitutional patterns and practices at the Orleans Parish jail dating back at least 2008”.
For nearly a decade, the jail has been under a federal consent decree due to conditions found unconstitutional, including a lack of medical and mental health care and a high level of violence.
When Hunt died last year, former Sheriff Marlin Gusman was still in charge of the facility. But in May, weeks before the lawsuit was filed, newly elected Sheriff Susan Hutson took office, promising to provide better medical and mental health care and make the jail safer for detainees. So far, that has been difficult: just last month, two people incarcerated in jail died within days.
Both Gusman and Hutson are named in the lawsuit, Hutson in his official capacity, along with 10 employees from OPSO and two from Wellpath, the jail’s contracted medical provider.
Gusman did not respond to requests for comment from The Lens. A Hutson spokesman declined to comment, and a Wellpath representative said it was company policy not to comment on active litigation.
It is not clear if the OPSO and Wellpath employees named in the lawsuit are still working in jail or if they were disciplined in connection with the conduct alleged in the lawsuit.
The Lens requested any reports related to Hunt’s death from the Sheriff’s Office in July 2021, but was told the case was still under investigation and would be provided when complete. When Gusman left office in May, none had come forward.
In response to another request made this week, a lawyer for OPSO said they were working to identify and review the reports.
The attorneys representing the Hunt family, Stephen Haedicke and Gary Bizal, declined to comment for this article.
Drugs found and then lost
Hunt was booked into the New Orleans jail on June 11, 2021. after a confrontation with New Orleans police related to an out-of-state warrant for his arrest in Mississippi, where he was wanted for murder. He was held in the city on $1 million bail while awaiting extradition.
According to the lawsuit, OPSO’s policy at the time was to scan anyone entering the jail twice with an X-ray body scanner. But when Hunt entered the facility, he was only scanned once, “and his arms were crossed in a way that violated protocol.” (According to the lawsuit, OJC policy says that detainees “must keep their hands at their sides so that any contraband can be seen on the scan.”)
Still, the lawsuit says the footage should have been enough for OPSO security to see that Hunt was bringing something to the jail.
“However, scanned images of Mr. Hunt showed that he was able to conceal an object in his hand, believed to be the contraband drugs (fentanyl) which he then ingested to commit suicide,” it reads.
According to disciplinary records obtained by The Lens last year, Hunt smashed multiple computer monitors in the jail’s registration area while being processed and, according to the lawsuit, was kept locked in a cell with a single small window. at the door and a space for food during most of his time at OJC.
Then, on June 21, ten days after Hunt was booked, he broke the sprinkler in his cell. According to the lawsuit, he did so in response to officers refusing to let him out.
Water flooded his cell and spilled into the living room and other surrounding areas. Agents struggled for nearly an hour to turn it off because they couldn’t get a utility closet door open, the lawsuit states.
During the course of the cleanup, an officer found a small white bag of powder in Hunt’s cell that contained fentanyl. The deputy gave it to a lieutenant. The lieutenant took him to a supervisor’s office and placed him on a supervisor’s desk, where he eventually disappeared.
But, according to the lawsuit, the drugs were not reported to any other OPSO staff, and no further steps were taken to ensure there were no additional drugs in the capsule. That, the lawsuit argues, prevented any further investigation into the origin of the drugs or a further search for the capsule in which Hunt was being held.
“If the drugs had been reported, then the cells in Pod 1D would have been searched,” the suit says, “and Mr. Hunt’s subsequent suicide using the drugs in his possession could have been prevented.”
He remained in a flooded cell
Despite the surrounding areas being cleaned up, Hunt was kept in a flooded cell where several inches of water had collected because OPSO Captain Stephen Carter ordered that the sprinkler water not be removed from Hunt’s cell.
Carter’s order, the lawsuit alleges, was given “maliciously and with the intent to punish Mr. Hunt for the destruction of the cell sprinkler.”
For the remainder of his time at OJC, Hunt remained in a flooded cell.
Several people met Hunt after the sprinkler incident and before he died. But the lawsuit claims that everyone ignored the obvious signs that Hunt was experiencing a mental health crisis and then a medical emergency.
When a Wellpath mental health professional, Terrie Ducote, came to talk to him after he told an officer he felt suicidal, they observed Hunt sitting in his underwear on a flooded floor and “essentially not talking, refusing to to answer questions.” “According to the lawsuit, Ducote claims that when she asked him if she was having suicidal thoughts, he shook his head but indicated that he wanted to get out of her cell. Ducote said “she couldn’t help him in that regard.”
The suit says that Ducote’s “alleged assessment of his suicide risk consisted of looking at him through a window in a solid metal door and then yelling at him through that door,” and that Ducote “knew or should have known that he posed a problem.” serious risk of self-harm.
Later that night, Hunt collapsed while talking to a detainee outside his cell who was helping clean up the water. OPSO Sgt. Mary Black went to Hunt’s cell, where she saw him lying on the floor. But she apparently didn’t consider it a medical emergency.
“Instead of calling for medical help, Black took a broomstick and stuck it through the door of Hunt’s cell food trap,” the suit alleges. “She pushed him several times, and according to Black, Mr. Hunt moved a bit and was apparently still breathing. Defendant Black told the inmate that he had reported Mr. Hunt’s collapse that Mr. Hunt was fine and that the inmate should return to his cell.”
Sometime in the middle of the night, an OPSO lieutenant noticed Hunt being held in a flooded cell and raised objections to Captain Carter. But Carter refused to change his request.
The next morning, Hunt did not come to his cell door for breakfast. Sergeant Black went back to Hunt’s cell and poked him with a creek stick through the food slot. Although Hunt “allegedly raised his head in response to the punches, he was basically unresponsive and didn’t go to the slot to retrieve the layup from him.”
“Instead, he just put his head back down,” the suit says. Still, medical personnel were not called.
An hour later, another OPSO employee, Captain Glenn Powell, also observed Hunt “unconscious on his mattress in the water on the floor of his cell.” Powell yelled at Hunt and claims he heard him snore and make noises, according to the lawsuit.
He also refused to call any of the medical staff and continued his jail duties until he met a Wellpath social worker, whom he asked to check on Hunt.
That social worker found Hunt “lying unconscious in a pool of water,” according to the lawsuit. But he waited 30 minutes for Powell to return to the stands before he called an emergency medical response team. He was given Narcan and other treatments, but apparently it was too late.
“The team found Mr. Hunt still lying in about two inches of water on the floor of his cell,” the suit says. “It was already cold to the touch and he was unresponsive. The team had to remove it from the water in order to treat it. While doing so, they found a small bag of white fentanyl powder in his hand.”
Hunt was taken to University Medical Center and was pronounced dead shortly after.
No responses to the complaint have been submitted. The case has been assigned to Judge Sarah Vance of the Eastern District of Louisiana.
