By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer

“I have repeatedly requested medical attention which they have denied.”

“In February 2004, I was denied access to the Jail’s worship services.”

“The place is busting at the seams. It’s cruel and inhuman punishment to be bunched up like this and it (is) our right to be treated human, not caged like crowded animals.”

Those are the pleas, hopes and dreams of inmates of the Laurel County Detention Center as expressed in federal lawsuits against the facility, its staff and county leaders.

Of the 15 federal suits filed since 2003, nine have been dismissed, judgments in two have been entered for the defendants, two were settled and two are pending.

The pending class action suits filed in 2006 and 2007 claim that the jail was negligent in its actions when it was discovered that methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was among the jail population.

The lawsuit maintains that the jail “failed to prevent and protect inmates from conditions that foster and persons that have infectious diseases such as MRSA.”

It also claims the jail housed inmates with infected persons without the inmates’ knowledge, failed to train staff and inmates in ways to prevent the transmission of such diseases, and denied inmates “appropriate and necessary medication and medical attention.”

The second suit, filed in 2007, claims the jail has “a policy, custom and/or practice of failing to protect inmates” from those who have infectious diseases, “purposely deceiving infected inmates as to the nature and risks of their disease” and “incarcerating inmates with infected persons without such inmates’ knowledge.”

MRSA is described as a virulent, flesh-eating, penicillin-resistant staph infection. It is a chronic, painful and disfiguring contagious disease.

The earlier suit stated that the infected inmate’s condition was ignored so long that when he was finally taken to the hospital, “the infected area of his body was gangrenous and had to be excised.”

The 2007 suit claims the jail is overcrowded, the result being that contagious diseases are easily passed through the population.

The 2006 suit notes that the jail was built to house 264 prisoners and the average population for the fiscal year ending in June 2007 was 414 — or a daily average of 157 percent of the designated capacity.

As of 3:20 p.m. Wednesday, the jail had a total of 313 prisoners.

Two of the cases were found in favor of the defendants — the jail and its employees.

In one of those cases, filed in August 2008, the inmate claimed that upon arrest and while in the shower room at the jail, the prisoner was “subjected to a deliberate and outrageous invasion of bodily integrity that shocks the conscience in violation of his rights .... by an unconstitutional strip search and physical contact by a jail employee by force and threat of violence.”

Based on the prisoner’s claims and failure to prove that the incident caused physical harm, U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove found no merit in the suit and ruled for the defendants.

A second case filed in that year was also found in favor of the county.

It was claimed by a prisoner who said he was beaten by another inmate and was poorly treated by the staff.

He claimed that though the jail’s heating system was quite poor, in November he was given only a short-sleeved jump suit and shower clogs to wear.

He said he was issued a sleeping mat, a sheet, a very thin blanket and an empty pillow case.

He said he was required to sleep on the floor.

“Cold air was blowing on my back. My feet were numb. I kept a cold, a continuous chronic backache and I rarely slept,” he wrote in his suit.

Van Tatenhove dismissed the case and found in favor of the county because the inmate, by then in another prison facility, filed a “request to withdraw his complaint. He does not explain his change of heart.”

In the first case that was settled, the plaintiff, a former inmate in the jail, sought payment for injuries, physical and mental, sustained when he was attacked by another prisoner.

The suit claims that on March 11, 2004, the man was housed in a place in the jail where the jail deputies, guards and employees “should have known that another inmate was going to attack him.”

The suit claims that jail staff told the other inmate that the plaintiff had been dating the inmate’s girlfriend while the boyfriend was in jail.

It claims that the inmate was allowed by jail staff to leave “the maximum security portion of the (jail) in order for the inmate to attack the plaintiff.”

The plaintiff was seriously injured, but the inmate was told by jail staff, the suit contends, that he had been killed.

Upon being told that his attack had resulted in the plaintiff’s death, the inmate hanged himself.

The parties reached a settlement in September 2008. Conditions of the settlement were not published.

The other settled case, filed in December 2007, claims that the plaintiff suffered a seizure and blackout and was left in his cell for six days and “denied proper medical treatment.”

The suit claimed the jail maintained a “persistent practice of overcrowding, underfunding, undertraining and understaffing the jail.”

The case was settled in February of this year. The conditions were not published.

The other nine cases were dismissed, usually because the court lost track of the inmate filing the suit or the inmate had requested the case to be discontinued.

In a handwritten suit filed in April 2004, an inmate claims he was attacked by “four or five employees” of the jail, who allegedly grabbed him by his arms and legs, shoved his head against a wall and threw him onto the cement floor.

He claimed that because he was diabetic, the food that was brought was not edible for him.

In another case, also handwritten and filed in May 2004, an inmate charges that his money account in the jail did not meet with the amount he believed he had in it.

The account showed a balance of $90 and he maintained there was $100 in the account.

The case was dismissed in June by District Judge Danny Reeves because the inmate had reported that he intended the suit be filed in state court instead of federal court.

In August 2004 another inmate sued the jail, seeking $80 million.

He claimed a bag of his clothing was missing. After he reported the missing clothing in a filed grievance, he claims in his suit, he was taken from the work release program and placed in segregation for 14 days.

His suit was dismissed because he had failed to proceed in pursuing the case, apparently after he had been placed in the Fulton County Detention Center in Hickman.

In November 2004, an inmate sued the jail for “denial of medical and dental care and treatment (and) violation of first amendment, right to Freedom of Religion.”

He claimed that in February, August, September and October he was not allowed to attend worship services in the jail.

“My attendance wishes were made known to the jail chaplain, Bro. Harry Ormsby, who requested I be allowed to attend. There was no response to the request,” he wrote.

District Judge Karen K. Caldwell dismissed the suit because the inmate was not proceeding, and mail sent to him from the court was returned.

In March 2005, three inmates together petitioned the federal court to “address these problems and fix them in a timely manner.” The suit was titled by the inmates as a “writ of habeas corpus for cruel and unusual punishment.”

It sought the court’s address of problems in the categories of overcrowding, medical, food, recreation, living conditions and “our rights as prisoners.”

But the mail sent by the court was returned as undelivered and Judge Caldwell dismissed the case.

In May 2005, another inmate sought relief through a lawsuit.

He said he had repeatedly sought medical attention because he had a blood clot in his right lower leg.

He complained because the jail’s medical staff had allegedly told him the clot didn’t exist and, according to the plaintiff, said, “You don’t have a blood clot until I say you have a blood clot.”

He said the medical staff failed to take him seriously as to his health, and he filed a grievance through Jailer Jack Sizemore, who had passed it on to the medical staff, which allegedly cursed him and told him he “would not ever see a doctor.”

Caldwell dismissed the suit because it called only for “injunctive relief requiring the defendants to provide him with medical care.”

He had transferred from Laurel County to the Roederer Corrections Complex, then to the Boone County jail, where he was finally released from state custody.

And since he was no longer in state custody, the state would not be required to furnish him with medical care.

In November 2005, an inmate filed suit against Sizemore, Roger Gibbs, supervisor of the office of public defense, and Larry Huffman on the public defense staff.

It was claimed that Gibbs allowed Huffman to represent the inmate, even though Huffman was not properly representing the inmate.

After the inmate sent a letter to the court asking for dismissal of the charges, Caldwell dismissed the suit.

In another handwritten filing in August 2005, the court was told by an inmate about an AIDS patient who was being housed with prisoners without the prisoners’ knowledge.

He complained also about the food and asked the court to “order the jail to get thermal trays, give us milk once a day, salt and pepper and serve Kool-Aid instead of non-sweet tea and dry cereal more for breakfast.”

Caldwell dismissed the suit because the inmate had not responded to motions served on him.

And finally, in an eight-page handwritten suit filed in June 2005, an inmate discussed in fine detail how his bad kidney infection was allegedly ignored by the medical staff in the Laurel County jail.

Eventually, after being transferred to another facility, he got surgery for his kidney stones.

Reeves dismissed the suit based on the inmate’s failure to continue his pursuit of the suit.