The family of
a transgender woman who died by suicide following a stint in a Georgia state
prison has landed a $2.2 million wrongful death settlement.
The
settlement, which was first reported by CNN on December 7, was reached four years after Jenna
Mitchell died in a case that prompted her family to proceed with a federal
civil rights lawsuit. Attorney David Shanies, who represented the family of the
late Layleen Polanco, a transgender woman who
died at Rikers in 2019, is also representing Mitchell’s family.
Mitchell, 25,
was being housed with men at Valdosta State Prison, where her family said she
was often held in solitary confinement over the course of eight or nine months,
despite suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and untreated gender
dysphoria, according to the lawsuit, which was obtained by Gay City News.
On December 2,
2017, Mitchell’s mother, Sheba Maree, called the prison to inform officials
that her daughter threatened suicide. Maree asked the prison to place her on
suicide watch, but a prison employee assured Maree that her daughter “was
already ‘in medical’ for a suicide attempt and was ‘okay,'” the lawsuit noted.
Yet, two days
later, Mitchell was placed in solitary confinement without any suicide watch —
and on that same day she told a prison official that she was planning suicide.
In response, a sergeant allegedly told her, “Then kill yourself, I don’t have
anything to do with that.”
At 1:30 p.m.
that day, Mitchell asked two officials to go to her cell. The officials
subsequently arrived to find a noose around her neck, at which point Mitchell
again stated her intention to die by suicide, according to the lawsuit.
That warning
sign did not prompt prison officials to take any action. Instead, Correction
Officer James Lee Roy Igou walked away and allegedly ignored other inmates when
they tried to alert him that Mitchell was “taking steps” towards a suicide, the
lawsuit stated. Igou laughed and shouted down the cell block to say that
Mitchell should avoid dying by suicide until he returns because he “want[ed] to
see.”
By 1:35 p.m., an
inmate told prison officials that Mitchell was hanging in her cell — and five
minutes later Igou and Sergeant Wallace Richardson found Mitchell hanging by
her neck inside her cell. Still, they did not try to lift her up in an effort
to save her.
Prison officials
searched unsuccessfully for a life-saving “cut down” tool used to cut the bed
sheets, but there were no cut down tools available, according to the suit.
Mitchell was
sent to a hospital and later died on December 6 following a coma that lasted
two days.
The lawsuit
pointed to injuries on Mitchell’s face that reflected physical violence, which
the prison said was a result of falling off a gurney twice while en route to
the hospital. The lawsuit asserted, however, that the injuries were
inconsistent with falling off a gurney and, instead, were likely the result of
physical violence.
Igou was fired
weeks later for placing feces in a spray bottle and spraying inmates, the
lawsuit said.
Notably, the
case resembled the 2019 death of Polanco, who was left to die by guards in her
“restrictive housing” cell at Rikers in New York City while she fatally
suffered seizures caused by epilepsy.
“A common
thread in both Jenna Mitchell and Layleen Polanco’s deaths is the utter
disregard corrections officials showed for the lives of incarcerated trans
women,” Shanies told Gay City News on December 7. “Both women were left to die
by governmental officials whose responsibility was to keep them safe. Both
deaths were easily preventable. When will it stop?”
Polanco’s case
led to a $5.9
million settlement and the suspension
of 17 Department of Correction officers.
In September,
the Department of Justice announced an investigation into the treatment of
prisoners in Georgia, including LGBTQ people, and an Obama-era investigation
once looked into sexual abuse by staff and prisoners in the state. Ashley
Diamond, a transgender woman who has been in a men’s prison in the state, sued
the Georgia Department of Correction after she alleged multiple sexual assaults
and said her hormones were being withheld.
A spokesperson
for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, declined to comment.
SOURCE: GAY CITY NEWS
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