Two weeks after he was booked on misdemeanor charges, Bradley Thomas died naked and alone in his jail cell in Lincoln County. When their mentally ill prisoner’s condition deteriorated, Sheriff’s deputies punished him instead of getting him the medical care he needed.
His illness was so severe that he placed food in the toilet, and was seen naked in his cell, scooping feces from the toilet and wiping it on the bowl and sink, and at times licking areas in the cell smeared with the feces. Six days after he began to refuse food, deputies found him dead in his cell, lying naked on the floor. Attorneys Thomas Melville and Jennifer Middleton, of Johnson Johnson and Schaller, filed a wrongful death and civil rights law suit against Lincoln County in the U.S. District Court in Eugene on April 1, 2016.
For news media coverage about the lawsuit, see The Oregonian, Estate of man with mental illness files wrongful death suit, Maxine Bernstein, April 1, 2016.