SALT LAKE CITY – An inmate at Utah State Prison is suing the Utah Department of Corrections in an effort to stop the shuffling of large groups of prisoners from one building to another.
Damon Christ says the practice led to widespread outbreaks of COVID-19 in prison as of October. The spread has continued in the following months, infecting more than 2,600 inmates, including 12 who later died.
“I’m not asking for damages for money. I’m not asking to be released,” Christ told Deseret News during a phone call from the prison’s Draper site. “I just say, ‘Look, the department is moving people recklessly. It’s causing massive outbreaks and infecting and killing people.”
Christ joins other inmates alleging that their requests to see a doctor or nurse have gone unanswered. And his demand comes amid requests for investigation into how the prison has handled the outbreaks.
“I think there needs to be a lot more transparency about the circumstances in which detained deaths occurred, a lot more transparency around the medical care that is given to people who are detained and there really needs to be a legislative audit. , ”said Sara Wolovick, an ACLU lawyer focused on inmate rights.
Christ says the prison’s treatment of the virus is a cruel and unusual punishment for inmates and violates the Utah Constitution’s ban on “excessive rigor” for inmates. The prison also goes against its own policy of employee conduct that compromises the safety of staff and inmates, he said.
In one example, employees instructed a sick inmate who was short of breath and left without light to “breathe deeply,” Christ said in his lawsuit.
He alleges deliberate indifference on the part of the state, a legal rule considered the threshold for successful legal claims against prisons and jails. They are generally considered responsible only if it is clear they knew medical care was inadequate, Wolovick said, creating an incentive for people with authority to avoid examining them.
“The legal landscape of medical care for incarcerated people rewards ignorance on a practical level,” Wolovick said. But an external review could provide details, he noted.
A Utah Department of Corrections spokeswoman declined to comment, citing pending legal action.
The agency has said it takes many factors into account when moving people who are in care to new areas and is working with state and county health officials to decide how best to separate inmates who give positive of those who give negative for COVID-19.
Christ says an initial Oct. 23 move took several with COVID-19 to the Lone Peak facility, where he was living at the time, he alleges in a handwritten request for extraordinary relief, filed last month in court of District 3 of Salt Lake City. During the moves, negative and positive inmates stayed for hours in the same bedrooms, he said.
“None of the transferred prisoners received evidence of COVID-19, nor were they even asked if they had symptoms,” he said in the lawsuit.
It was only a matter of days before he fell ill with cough and fever. Christ said he tested positive in the first week of November, but still has trouble breathing and has brain fog.
Some around him struggled to get out of bed, he said, while others showed no symptoms.
A total of 1,065 inmates and 63 officials are considered to have active cases of COVID-19, according to department data Tuesday, the most recent available.
He alleges that the Utah Department of Corrections does not have the resources to handle massive outbreaks, as some nurses administer several tests of COVID-19 without changing their gloves.
Judge Keith Kelly ordered the department last week to respond to the allegations within 30 days. The agency has not yet done so.
Christ, a paralegal, said he was anxious to complete his sentence for theft for being able to return to work on managing construction projects. Try to stop the movements at least until the inmates receive a coronavirus vaccine. State health officials have said they expect state prisoners to be inoculated in March.
Christ also wants the judge to order correctional employees to wear N95 masks, change gloves after each test, and institute a two-week quarantine protocol for any movement needed due to the order of a doctor or a significant threat.
Others have challenged coronavirus protocols for imprisoned Utahns, but previous legal efforts have been unsuccessful.
The ACLU and defense attorneys sued in April with the goal of forcing greater freedom for those awaiting trial, senior inmates and the medically vulnerable, but the Utah Supreme Court rejected the offer on grounds procedural.
The judges found that the groups had no right to present the case, in part because they were not directly affected by prison policies.
Similarly, a federal judge in the U.S. district court in Salt Lake City filed a lawsuit against federal prisoners who were detained in the Weber County Jail, but did not stop them from reliving the case in the future.
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Annie Knox