Man brutally beaten by other inmates was left for dead for hours at TN jail, lawsuit says
A man is suing a Tennessee jail after he says he was “savagely and repeatedly” beaten by other inmates and left bleeding in his cell for hours without any medical attention.
The man, Steven Laws, was booked into the Cocke County Jail on March 19, 2022, on misdemeanor drug charges, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The lawsuit says that what followed demonstrates how the jail is unsafe for inmates and has a history of negligent treatment and overcrowding that leads to violence.
Laws is suing the county, a former sheriff, the chief of corrections, jail staff, the outsourced nursing staff and other individuals for $1.5 million in punitive damages and for legal fees.
McClatchy News has reached out to Laws’ legal representation and Cocke County and did not immediately receive a response.
‘Beaten and stomped’
Once in the jail, Laws says other inmates attacked him, beating him in multiple locations over the course of an hour.
“He was beaten and stomped in his cell, dragged into the showers and beaten and kicked again, and dragged back to his cell and beaten and stomped yet again,” the lawsuit said.
Laws said he suffered “serious head and facial trauma, including a concussion, multiple jaw fractures that required emergency surgery, lacerations, bruises, swelling, and injuries to his neck, back, and hip.”
After being beaten, he was left in his cell, bleeding and unable to talk, for 12 hours before any correctional officer checked on him, despite jail policy requiring regular security checks, Laws said.
Pleading for help
The lawsuit says officers eventually walked by and saw his bloody clothes. Laws begged to go to the hospital and was denied, instead being taken to the nursing station where the officers used FaceTime to call a nurse who was not at the jail.
The nurse was told Laws had lost consciousness and could see the injuries to his face and jaw, but told officers that she would “check him out in the morning” and told them to give him “an ice pack for his jaw and two Tylenols for the pain,” according to the lawsuit. Laws was then moved to a medical cell.
The lawsuit says that while in the medical cell, Laws’ condition worsened to a point where other inmates also in the cell started to plead with officers on Laws’ behalf that he needed medical attention.
Laws says he was eventually bailed out by his mother after “two days of pain and agony” and was taken to a local ER. He was transferred to the University of Tennessee Medical Center where he received “an emergency operation to surgically repair multiple jaw fractures and extract multiple impacted teeth,” according to the lawsuit.
The emergency surgery and other medical bills totaled $34,000, the lawsuit said.
Issues in the past
The lawsuit says Laws’ experience wasn’t an isolated incident, pointing to what the lawsuit calls a history at the jail of violence between inmates.
In 2017, the Cocke County Jail was decertified by the Tennessee Corrections Institute, according to the lawsuit, for gross overcrowding and understaffing and poor living conditions for inmates.
During a visit in 2017 led by then-Chief Deputy Derrick Woods, WVLT reported rotting ceilings, holes in the floor and leaks.
The jail has exceeded its 120-person capacity for eleven consecutive years, the lawsuit says, with 151 inmates present on the day that Laws was booked into the jail, “leaving 31 inmates to sleep on the floor.”
Laws also said the jail doesn’t separate inmates booked on violent charges from those with non-violent charges.
The lawsuit says Laws’ booking officer did not properly assess him, and he was placed in a cell with a group of violent felons, including those who beat him.
Laws says the jail and Cocke County failed to uphold their responsibility for for his well-being. The lawsuit also says the county and the sheriff’s office were given years to improve the conditions in the jail, but failed to do so despite losing their state certification.
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