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Court Sides with Prison Guards Accused of ‘Deliberate Indifference’ in Restrained Inmate’s Death

January 1, 2025 | FlaglerLive | 2 Comments

One of the prison's guard towers. (© FlaglerLive)
Might as well be death row. (© FlaglerLive)

A divided federal appeals court Monday sided with Florida correctional officers in a lawsuit that accused them of “deliberate indifference” in the 2017 death of an inmate who had been restrained.

A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, upheld a district judge’s ruling granting summary judgment to 10 Lake Correctional Institution officers. The estate of inmate Jose Gregory Villegas filed the lawsuit, but a district judge and the appeals-court majority found that the officers were entitled to what is known as qualified immunity “because their conduct did not violate any clearly established right,” according to Monday’s opinion, written by Judge Barbara Lagoa and joined by Judge Ed Carnes.




Villegas was found unresponsive on the floor of his cell and became combative after he was awakened by officers. The opinion said he had used the synthetic drug K2. Numerous officers became involved in restraining Villegas, who ultimately was placed in a wheelchair after he had been restrained. Officers began wheeling Villegas to another prison dorm without stopping for nurses to check his breathing and pulse, the opinion said.

Medical staff later found he did not have a pulse, and after he could not be resuscitated, Villegas was pronounced dead at South Lake Hospital. An autopsy report concluded that “the force applied during the physical altercation impeded Villegas’s blood flow and put strain on his cardiovascular system, which was exacerbated by his excited delirium and increased heart rate, and ultimately led to cardiac arrest,” Lagoa wrote.

In a dissent, Judge Adalberto Jordan wrote that the officers did not take reasonable measures and should not be entitled to qualified immunity.

–News Service of Florida

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Pogo says

    January 2, 2025 at 11:52 am

    @A goddamn disgrace

    ,,,but too, a bouquet of ragweed, and a box of chocolates, for the vengeful, bloodthirsty, trolls who are prevalent in Floriduh’s electorate; and the commenters to this site.

    Clicks count.😞

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  2. Skibum says

    January 2, 2025 at 4:27 pm

    The following information on the drug commonly referred to as K2 is from WebMD: Side Effects
    When inhaled: K2/spice is unsafe. It can cause serious side effects, including hallucinations, seizures, kidney failure, heart attacks, stroke, and death.

    What is missing in this article are some pertinent facts that I was quickly able to find within the official record of the United States Court of Appeals decision relating to the family’s lawsuit filed after his death. You can find it here:

    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca11/22-10881/22-10881-2024-12-30.html

    Fact 1) the prison officers had to physically fight the inmate for nearly 20 minutes in his cell after he was found unconscious and then woke up, and it took 6 officers during that time to physically restrain him. Fact 2) according to this article, the officers were moving him from one dorm to another, and that needs clarification. The court paperwork states that the six officers were taking him directly to the medical unit, a mere 2 1/2 minute trip from his cell, which is a very short period of time where he was evaluated by medical staff, who determined he was not breathing. Maybe the prison officers should have been more alert to signs that the inmate was not breathing during their brief movement of him to medical, but keep in mind that they are not medical staff and have little or no training to be able to discern whether the inmate is passed out, sleeping, or even playing dead. There was apparently no indication that any of the officers intentionally deprived the inmate from medical care when they were moving him from one dorm to the other, so it appears the court rationally concluded that they were in the performance of their duties and still had what is called qualified immunity. Based on the potential side effects of using K2 and the results of the autopsy report from the coroner, the most probably reason the inmate died was because HE made the decision to partake in illicit drugs, while in prison serving a sentence for his criminal behavior, and that ended up, ultimately, being his last bad decision.

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