PANAMA CITY — A federal court has thrown out the lawsuit of a man whose wife committed suicide while in jail.
Maureen Joyce Bearden threaded the sheet from her jail cot through the door grate of her cell in March 2009, an act she’d longed to do for most of her life, according to the lawsuit filed by her husband. Not long after, Bay County Jail guards would arrive to find her with the sheet around her neck, blue and cold to the touch.
Suffering most of her life from bouts of severe depression, the 26-year-old Maureen Bearden recently had married James Bearden before she was arrested on robbery charges.
A couple of months later she would be dead.
Her death, James Bearden claimed in the lawsuit, could have been avoided by Bay County Jail administrators: Sheriff Frank McKeithen, Warden Rick Anglin and Ronald Lippman, a former jailhouse doctor. Coupled with her mental illness and a “cost-saving policy of refusal to provide inmates with face-to-face mental health therapy,” the lawsuit alleged, the jail administration left her without support in a critical time and with the tools to take her life.
However, in a summary judgement issued Wednesday, the court said the lawsuit failed to support the claim of a civil rights injustice, which falls under the court’s jurisdiction.
“Basically, you are required to prove the sheriff’s office was deliberately indifferent to her medical needs,” said John Jolly, BCSO’s legal counsel in the case. “Nobody’s civil rights got violated in this case.”
BCSO had taken on jail oversight in October 2008, months before the incident. McKeithen declined to comment on the lawsuit since the case could proceed in the state court on charges of negligence. McKeithen did say mental health services at the facility did not suffer during the transition.
Maureen Bearden was booked into jail and underwent an initial intake screening. She was deemed incompetent to stand trial three days before by a judge and was to be transferred to a mental hospital.
She had attempted numerous times to end her life — nearly 25, according to BCSO. She jumped off a bridge on one occasion. She’d stabbed herself 28 times with an ink pen on another, according to the lawsuit. During her time in jail, she claimed she heard voices telling her to kill herself, and she saw blood on the wall.
James Bearden said they had knowledge she was still suicidal and in need of care but “ignored the serious nature and intentionally or recklessly failed to provide that care,” the lawsuit stated. It further accused the three of leaving her with the instruments for her to commit suicide.
Despite Maureen Bearden’s suicidal tendencies, the lawsuit alleges that in light of their recent marriage, she looked forward to spending her life with James Bearden.
He is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against jail administration and a jury trial.
Since undertaking jailhouse responsibilities, BCSO has implemented a policy of gradual inmate reintegration from suicide watch to general population, an electronic check system of patrolling guards, additional cameras in each cell and a committee that reviews the reintegration of inmates on suicide watch to general population, McKeithen said.