An Albuquerque attorney has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in connection to the 2013 death of a Navajo man in the Montezuma County jail.
In a 40-page complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court in Denver, Russell Sacks claimed that a lack of proper health care contributed to the death of Harrison M. Begay, 38, on Oct. 27, 2013.
“The death of Mr. Begay is an example of the systematic problem of defendants’ failure to provide adequate medical attention to a Navajo citizen who was a known alcoholic suffering from an acute episode,” Sacks wrote in the complaint.
The lawsuit named Southwest Memorial Hospital, Montezuma County commissioners, former Sheriff Dennis Spruell, five detention officers, a sheriff’s office nurse and an emergency room physician as defendants. It requests a jury trial and more than $75,000 in damages.
Sacks argues that the defendants intentionally denied Begay access to adequate treatment. Begay died about 26 hours after he was jailed.
“The family decided to file the lawsuit, because they don’t want Mr. Begay to die in vain,” Sacks told The Journal via telephone.
Last year, the Colorado Civil Rights Division reported that Southwest had met all demands, including cultural sensitivity training, stemming from a 2012 lawsuit that accused the hospital of turning away a Ute Mountain Ute woman after she was raped in 2010. The settlement required that Southwest submit annual reports to the Colorado Civil Rights Division.
In the last half of 2013, Begay and two other inmates died in the jail. A 47-year-old intoxicated woman died in her holding cell last month.
In November 2013, Begay’s family reported receiving a letter from Jessie Neitzer, Southwest’s compliance and risk management director, stating that the hospital didn’t find a correlation between Begay’s death and the care he received.
Southwest Memorial spokeswoman Haley Leonard declined to comment this week, citing the pending litigation.
Spruell did not return The Journal’s phone calls this week. In April 2014, after receiving notice of a lawsuit, he told county commissioners, “I guess they think lying is OK.”
County attorney John Baxter also did not return a telephone call this week.
Current Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin declined to comment, but he said two of the five jailors listed as defendants aren’t employed by the sheriff’s office.
