Multi-million dollar settlement over prison death could be heard in Sebastian District Court

On Tuesday (August 20), members of the Sebastian County Quorum Court are expected to hear a proposed settlement in connection with the August 2021 death of Larry Price Jr. The death of Larry Price Jr. was the result of “cruel and inhumane” treatment during his incarceration at the Sebastian County Detention Center.

On January 13, 2023, a lawsuit seeking a jury trial was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. The defendants were Sebastian County and Turn Key Health Clinics, the company hired to provide medical care at the prison after Price's death.

In a motion dated June 10, 2024, Turn Key Health requested a settlement hearing.

“The parties have consulted and wish to request a settlement hearing as soon as possible to attempt to resolve this case prior to the next round of testimony, if at all possible given the court's schedule and available justices of the peace,” an excerpt from the filing states.

According to a July 5, 2024 letter from attorney Eric Heipt of the Seattle-based law firm Budge and Heipt, which represents the Price family, there was a settlement hearing on July 8 presided over by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Ford. Heipt's letter states that verdicts in similar cases range from $95 million to $8.3 million.

The terms of any agreement are unknown, as are details about who will discuss the matter during Tuesday's meeting and whether Sebastian County Sheriff Hobe Runion will participate in the discussion.

“NOTHING IS FINAL”
Talk Business & Politics was informed late Friday that Quorum Court members had received physical “confidential” documents in their respective homes for the Aug. 20 meeting that were not part of the public meeting documents on the county website. The agenda item “Discussion of Jail Incident” is the first item among the new business items. Sebastian County Judge Steve Hotz said no supporting documents were available at the time of the meeting. The agenda has been published online.

The documents, obtained by Talk Business & Politics on Friday through a Freedom of Information Act request, are a collection of federal court filings, state records and other documents already in the public domain. (Talk Business & Politics could not confirm whether the documents obtained under the FOIA request matched the documents sent to Quorum Court members.)

Hotz said a vote on a settlement is not on the agenda, but a member of the Quorum Court can request a vote on an item during a meeting. Sources have told Talk Business & Politics that a proposed settlement is about $6 million, with the county paying half and Turn Key Health Clinics paying the other half. Sources have also said a jury trial could have resulted in a verdict of at least $20 million against the county and Turn Key Health.

Hotz did not want to talk about the terms of an agreement.

“I will not discuss this case further without our counsel reviewing it. Nothing is final and negotiations are ongoing. I do not want to do anything that could jeopardize our counsel's ability to negotiate what is best for our taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

PRICE DEATH BACKGROUND
In August 2020, Price, who had a history of mental illness and had multiple brushes with police, entered a Fort Smith police station where he allegedly made verbal threats and pointed fingers in the shape of a gun. He was charged with making terroristic threats and booked into the Sebastian County Jail. Bail was set at $1,000.

Unable to pay bail, Price remained in county jail for over a year, often in solitary confinement. He died on August 29, 2021. The details of his incarceration and death made national headlines.

“According to the complaint, between August 1 and August 29, 2021, when Price died, staff logged more than 4,000 health check entries with the same entry 'Inmate and Cell OK.' Ten more identical entries were logged after Price was pronounced dead,” noted this detailed report on January 14, 2023 from the Washington Post.

The lawsuit filed by Heipt states, in part: “Larry Price suffered the torment of his untreated mental illness for months while prison health and security staff watched him languish – indifferent to his life-threatening medical and mental health needs and the cruelty of his confinement. He died not only because of their deliberate indifference and neglect, but also because of systemic deficiencies in the Sebastian County Jail's policies and practices that placed the severely mentally ill at significant risk of serious injury or death. The Constitution requires better treatment of society's most vulnerable citizens.”

In an interview At 40/29 News, Runion blamed the system.

“Sheriffs have to deal with people they shouldn't have to deal with. We need to work to change the law so we don't have to keep these people in jail. This is not an appropriate institution for these types of problems. Sheriffs are the only person who can't get them out of jail. Prosecutors and judges, possibly the state hospital, those are the three people or organizations that can get people out of jail. Sheriffs have no say in that,” he said.

Catherine Fontenot, a Louisiana corrections officer hired by Heipt to review the case, said Price's treatment by Sebastian County and Turn Key Health officials was “cruel and inhumane.”

Their report contained the following findings.
• “During Mr. Price's more than a year in custody, neither doctors nor psychiatrists performed any physical checks on him. The turn-key health personnel at the Sebastain County Jail did not provide for such checks, nor did the county assign psychiatrists to do so. As a result, the only people who regularly observed Mr. Price were detention officers with no medical or psychiatric training who simply checked for signs of life.”

• “Detention center officials documented that they conducted four wellness checks per hour on Mr. Price during his one-year, 10-day detention (as required by regulations). Each entry was exactly the same: 'Inmate and cell OK.'” They repeatedly recorded that Mr. Price was fine, despite 69 incident reports documenting his increasingly irrational, paranoid, delusional, and unhygienic behavior, and despite his apparent weight loss. No referrals for medical or psychiatric care were issued for Mr. Price – even when he was so obviously malnourished that he looked like a starving, severely emaciated person.”

• “Tragically, on August 29, 2021, Mr. Price was found unconscious, his eyes open, lying motionless in standing water and his urine. Even in the hours and minutes before finding Mr. Price in this condition, detention center officials continued to document that he and his cell were 'OK.'”

• “The Sebastian County Sheriff's Office failed to conduct a meaningful investigation into this matter and the Sebastian County Detention Center Jail administration failed to initiate a meaningful internal review of the in-custody death. … In my professional opinion, the excessive inmate population and understaffing at the Sebastian County Jail during the incarceration of Larry Price were a recipe for disaster and fell far short of what is acceptable in the corrections industry.”

• “I find it shocking that the Sebastian County Jail did not conduct a serious investigation into Mr. Price's death. As a jail administrator, this is almost unfathomable to me. It shows a lack of leadership, violates basic correctional standards, and demonstrates a lack of consideration for the health and safety of inmates going forward. In addition, it demonstrates that the practices used during Mr. Price's incarceration were consistent with standard jail practices and that the actions of jail staff were consistent with jail administration policies and expectations.”

• “What happened to Larry Eugene Price Jr. was cruel and inhumane. Numerous individual and collective failures occurred throughout his pretrial detention. In my professional opinion, the acts, omissions and practices described in this report fell well below the standard of care in the correctional system.”

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