Lawsuit: Mentally ill man isolated in jail cell for 20 days without care before he died

Joshua McLemore was arrested in Jackson County on July 20, 2021. He was dead three weeks later.

A new federal lawsuit alleges that officials at the Southern Indiana jail failed, over and over, to provide adequate treatment for McLemore, who showed obvious signs of mental illness in the 20 days he was locked naked in a small, windowless isolation cell.

The 29-year-old, who had a history of schizophrenia and substance abuse, deteriorated in plain view of jail officials and security cameras. Yet, according to the complaint filed Wednesday, jailers showed neglect and "deliberate indifference" to McLemore's wellbeing, keeping him in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"Nobody deserves to be treated like that," said Seattle attorney Hank Balson, who represents McLemore's estate. "Nobody deserves to be ignored when they're suffering in that kind of condition."

In a constant state of psychosis, McLemore barely slept and, instead, spent hours staring into space, screaming, laughing, talking, gesticulating, sitting up and lying down, often covered in his own waste, the complaint says. He ate and drank very little of whatever the jail staff slipped through a slot in his cell door. Instead, he threw his meals on the floor and sometimes nibbled on the Styrofoam boxes his food came in.

By Aug. 8, 2021 ― his 20th day in the isolation cell ― McLemore had lost almost 45 pounds and was severely emaciated. That day, according to the complaint, jail staff finally called an ambulance.

McLemore died of multiple organ failure two days later.

Death Sentence: Indiana's county jails are home to a hidden epidemic

The lawsuit names as defendants Jackson County Sheriff Rick Meyer, other jail supervisors and medical staff, and Advanced Correctional Healthcare, Inc., a Tennessee-based private contractor that provides healthcare services to Jackson County Jail and about 370 other correctional facilities in 21 states.

The sheriff's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jessica Young, president and chief executive of Advanced Correctional Healthcare, said: "We take criticisms of the care provided by our team seriously. We are prohibited from disclosing patient information due to federal HIPAA privacy and confidentiality laws."

The jail officials' actions, the lawsuit alleges, are also reflective of systemic failures to provide adequate mental health services to inmates.

‘Left to die’: Indiana’s county jails are home to a hidden epidemic that’s growing worse

Across Indiana's jails, a crisis fueled by overcrowding, widespread staffing shortages and an influx of people with mental health and substance abuse problems has led to hundreds of deaths. More than 300 inmates died from 2010 to 2021, an IndyStar investigation found. Many, like McLemore, were held on low-level charges and had not yet had their day in court.

"Josh had not been convicted of any crime. He was a pretrial detainee," Balson said. "Everybody in jail is somebody's son, somebody's father, somebody's brother, somebody's daughter."

'Where am I?'

McLemore was raised in Long Beach, Mississippi. He loved to read, play chess and video games, and watch sports. At some point, he and his girlfriend, Abigail Smith, moved to Texas. Smith died in a car crash in 2019.

Smith's father, Slim Smith, said "that seemed to be the beginning of a real bad decline" for McLemore.

McLemore moved to Indiana in late 2020 and settled in Seymour, about halfway between Indianapolis and Louisville.

On July 20, 2021, he was taken to the hospital after a maintenance employee at his apartment found him lying on the floor, naked and confused. About an hour after arriving at the hospital, police arrested him for pulling a nurse's hair while in a state of psychosis, according to court records.

McLemore was immediately taken to the isolation cell at Jackson County Jail, where four guards pinned him against the wall and forced him to his knees, his face wedged into the corner of a concrete wall, video surveillance shows.

After they stripped McLemore and left, he began licking the walls as he moved around on his knees. He spoke gibberish. At times, he stared at the camera jail staff used to monitor his movements.

"Where am I?" he asked.

Death sentence: Indiana jailers knew she might hurt herself, but she died hours later. She's not alone.

A jail supervisor later placed McLemore on "medical observation," which required staff to monitor him via the surveillance camera every 15 minutes and log those observations. But the logs were maintained for only 7 1/2 of the 20 days that McLemore was in custody, according to the complaint.

No mental health professional or physician checked on McLemore, even as jail officials witnessed clear signs of mental illness, according to the complaint.

The only medical personnel at the jail was a licensed practical nurse or LPN, whose first interaction with McLemore lasted less than two minutes, according to the complaint. That interaction ended with the nurse tossing a Gatorade bottle through the food slot, the complaint says, "the way one would toss a piece of meat to a wild animal in a cage."

"The LPN's job is a gatekeeper. He doesn't have the authority to diagnose or order treatment, but his job is to make sure that somebody who needs care gets the level of care that he needs," Balson said. "He should've immediately recognized that Josh's needs were more than what the jail can handle."

'Force and restraint' instead of adequate care

Jail guards took McLemore out of isolation only four times, either to clean the cell or give him a bath, using unreasonable force against an inmate who showed no signs of resisting, according to the complaint.

On July 25, 2021, guards pinned McLemore to the floor and placed him in a restraint device. They bound his legs and ankles together and placed a harness over his head, strapping it to the bottom of the restraint device, according to the complaint. He was bound for 4 1/2 hours.

On July 27, 2021, a week after he was arrested, McLemore was taken out of his cell for a brief shower. Guards strapped him to a chair and placed him under running water, video surveillance showed.

"Custody staff resorted to the only tools they had been trained to use: force and restraint," the complaint says.

By Aug. 6, 2021, video surveillance showed a weakened McLemore lying on a thin, blue mattress surrounded by food scraps and pieces of Styrofoam. He was barely able to lift his head as a staffer helped him drink Gatorade from a straw two days later.

"Honest to god, this josh mcelmore (sic). Has the court said anything about getting him out of here ... he can't hold his hands, legs anything. He's dead weight," another jail staff said in a text message to the jail commander on Aug. 8, 2021.

McLemore was taken by ambulance at about 6 p.m. that day. His mother decided to withdraw life support on Aug. 10, 2021.

Rhonda McLemore died unexpectedly in December, almost a year and a half after losing her son.

"Josh was my sister's only child. His loss devastated her," Lita Ladner, Joshua McLemore's aunt, said in a statement. "He was also my only nephew, and a devoted friend to many. Even though he struggled with mental health issues we loved him with all our hearts."

The Sarah Pender case: 'I deserve to be let home,' Sarah Jo Pender said. The man who prosecuted her agrees.

A broader problem

McLemore died less than a month after the death of another inmate at the jail.

Ta'Neasha Chappell was found unresponsive by Jackson County jail staff and died at a hospital in Seymour on July 16, 2021. The 23-year-old Louisville woman began to get sick the day before, when she vomited and spiked a fever. But jail staff did not call an ambulance until nearly a day later when Chappell was found unconscious.

Last summer, almost a year after McLemore died, Jackson County Prosecutor Jeff Chalfant found that actions by jail officials did not rise to the level of a crime. But the prosecutor also found that McLemore "most likely died due to a prolonged lack of attention" by the jail staff.

Balson acknowledged that jails across the country have been forced to house mentally ill inmates they're not equipped to keep. "There's a lack of will and a lack of commitment to make changes to the system so that people with mental illness aren't treated like criminals," he said.

But he said this does not excuse the constitutional violations that happened in McLemore's case and the failure by supervisors to make sure staffers are trained.

"This wasn't just one individual guard making a mistake or acting cruelly," he said. "This was a jail that did not have sufficient medical and mental health staff in place to treat people in their care."

Contact IndyStar reporter Kristine Phillips at (317) 444-3026. Follow her on Twitter: @bykristinep.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Death of Joshua McLemore, a mentally ill jail inmate, prompts lawsuit