A federal jury on Wednesday awarded $4 million to the mother of a man who died in the Saguache County jail more than five years ago, an attorney said.
Jackson Maes, 27, died by suicide alone in his cell and no deputy checked on him for more than eight hours, his mother alleged in the federal lawsuit. He’d made suicidal statements before his death, but deputies failed to get him mental health help and did not take away items he could have used for self-harm.
The Denver jury on Wednesday found the sheriff’s office liable for inadequate training and found a jail commander liable for deliberate indifference, said Sean Dormer, an attorney for Maes’ mother, Sarah Lieberenz. The jurors began deliberations at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and reached a verdict around 1 p.m. Wednesday.
“I think the most important thing to Sarah, and to all of the friends and family of Jackson who watched (the trial), is that it is a statement that his life didn’t need to end that day, in that place, and that his condition was a medical condition and he deserved care just like anyone else,” Dormer said. “It is an important verdict for the idea that suicidal thoughts are not supposed to be a death sentence. That life goes on and there is hope.”
Saguache County Sheriff Dan Warwick did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
Maes was jailed on Nov. 16, 2019, after a worker at a Crestone bar called 911 because she was worried about how drunk he was. The deputy who responded found Maes had a warrant for failing to appear in court for a traffic ticket and arrested him.
The deputy put Maes in a holding cell at the Saguache County Sheriff’s Office, where the 27-year-old banged his head on a wall and made suicidal comments to the deputies.
The deputies placed a call to mental health professionals, but nobody answered. Deputies didn’t leave a voicemail and didn’t try to contact anybody else for help, the lawsuit alleged. They also did not place Maes on suicide watch.
At about 10:15 p.m., Maes began to create a way to hang himself in his cell — about seven minutes after a deputy left his cell for what would be the last time that night.
Maes hanged himself at 10:21 p.m., video shows. At that time, and in the minutes before, deputies socialized in the dispatch room, the lawsuit states. Nobody physically checked on Maes or looked at the video feed of his cell. His body was not discovered until 7 a.m. the next day.
A deputy later claimed in a report that he’d checked the cells at 11 p.m. and midnight, but surveillance video showed he did not. A second deputy who took over at midnight also failed to check the cells.
Dormer argued during the trial that deputies should have checked on Maes regularly that night.
“It would have taken…10 seconds to check on Jackson in his cell before leaving for the night,” Dormer said.
He noted that the amount of the final payment will be higher than the jury’s $4 million verdict, because attorneys’ fees and costs will be added to that. He expects the final payment to be close to $7 million.
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