Erie County agrees to $1 million settlement in death of Holding Center inmate
Case spotlighted questionable mental health screening
Erie County has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit that threw a harsh spotlight on the Holding Center’s treatment of inmates years ago.
Michael T. Bennett died at age 28 following a struggle with six Holding Center officers in 2002. The State Commission of Correction attributed his death to traumatic asphyxia: A shoe had been pressed into his back.
The commission concluded Bennett might have lived with better mental health screening, an issue noticed in county jail cases since then by the U. S. Justice Department and the families of dead inmates.
The $1 million settlement was negotiated under then-County Executive Joel A. Giambra and wrapped up earlier this year. It has been tightly guarded by aides to new County Executive Chris Collins and Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz, who pays the bills.
Even though taxpayer money went out the door, the county officials have honored a confidentiality agreement intended to keep the details secret.
The $1 million, enough to employ another Holding Center nurse for 16 years, was revealed in documents kept by the state-appointed control board, which reviews county contracts and agreements worth more than $50,000.
The spotlight trained on the Holding Center six years ago has not faded. The U. S. Justice Department now wants to inspect the Holding Center downtown and the county Correctional Facility in Alden to interview inmates and assess the health care and mental health care the facilities provide.
The Justice Department was alarmed by five inmate deaths since 2007, three of them suicides.
“As much as my sister did wrong, she was not an evil person,” said Loretta Ivey of Massachusetts, speaking about her sister, Joann Jesse, who was found hanging in her Holding Center cell in March.
Jesse, a 48-year-old addict, had been jailed on a petit larceny charge. She had pneumonia in both lungs and, her sister said, should have been sent to a hospital for the pneumonia and heroin withdrawal.
“I feel she could be alive today given better care,” Ivey said.
In another case, Michael G. Roberts, 49, accused of sex with a minor, threw himself off a railing after being deemed unlikely to attempt suicide.
Collins and Sheriff Timothy B. Howard, through County Attorney Cheryl A. Green, have denied the Justice Department’s request to inspect the lock-ups.
Green had noticed the Justice Department treats counties that welcome investigators more harshly than it treats counties that force it to file a lawsuit.
Green persuaded Collins to block the inspectors and let them sue. That way, the investigation would unfold under the watch of a federal judge.
The strategy was not welcomed by people familiar with the medical care offered in the county-run jails, particularly in the Holding Center.
Defendants tend to enter the system through the Holding Center, which is generally used for pretrial detention. Is the medical staff overwhelmed by the medical issues and addictions it sees?
“What goes on at the Holding Center should be a source of shame to anyone in Erie County,” said Nan L. Haynes, a Buffalo lawyer now suing the county on behalf of Craig S. Beatty. Beatty slid into a diabetic coma in 2005 when Holding Center personnel denied him his regular doses of insulin.
He is suing for $250,000. Other jail-related lawsuits are pending. And Bennett’s lawyers — the late Johnnie Cochran was once among them — have accepted $1 million from the county.
That’s real money, said the head of the County Legislature’s Finance and Management Committee, Democrat Kathy Konst of Lancaster.
“We did increase the number of nurses, and we have tried to address shortcomings,” said Konst, also a candidate for State Senate this year. “Those are small steps that may need to be ratcheted up now, as we see that we have serious problems.”
Bennett, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had been found walking naked down a West Side street and eventually was placed in the Holding Center in July 2002. Jail personnel reported that one day he tried to hang himself with a shoelace and repeatedly jumped off his toilet, smashing his head into the bars.
A grand jury cleared the Holding Center personnel of criminal liability, determining that during their altercation they were trying to control Bennett to get him to Erie County Medical Center. But the State Commission of Correction determined that Bennett might have lived had he received proper emergency mental health care when placed in the Holding Center.
