Left: King County Correctional Facility (King County). Right: DeAnna Davis, who died at the jail in 2023 (MacDonald Hoague and Bayless).
Staff at a Washington state jail ignored the deteriorating health of a 58-year-old inmate despite persistent vomiting leading to her death from dehydration and an electrolyte imbalance, a lawsuit claims.
The family of DeAnna Davis filed a lawsuit against King County and several staff last week after she died at the King County Correctional Facility in Seattle nearly three years ago. Family members accuse the jail of deliberate indifference to a serious medical need and violating her 14th Amendment rights.
Plaintiff lawyers claim Davis' health deteriorated over four days and jail staff did nothing to prevent her "foreseeable" death. Her attorneys called it "death by observation."
From the lawsuit:
Ms. DeAnna Davis died because King County Correctional Facility deputies and medical staff left Ms. Davis to suffer despite clear and documented warning signs that she was in distress and unable to advocate for herself. Ms. Davis was naked, lying on the floor, allegedly refusing medications she could not comprehend she needed due to a lack of competency. Ms. Davis's bedding was soiled and wet. For three days, she visibly deteriorated with known persistent "severe diarrhea" and vomiting. Everyone noticed. No one acted. Ms. Davis died alone, sick, cold, and dehumanized.
Davis suffered a yearslong battle with mental health issues after the death of her husband. She was arrested some 30 times between 2018 and 2023, the lawsuit said.
Seattle police officers arrested her on March 17, 2023, for an alleged trespass violation at a Lowe's. She was screaming and not making much sense while obviously suffering a mental health crisis. From the start of her stay, Davis suffered from "severe diarrhea" and vomiting, the lawsuit said. Jail staff "allowed Ms. Davis to decline for days," the lawsuit stated. Nurses failed to take her vitals after the first day and "wholly failed to treat her illness and appropriately escalate her care to a midlevel provider or physician," according to the suit.
As the days went on, Davis began refusing her medication, the lawsuit said. But nurses allegedly never bothered to check with doctors or other staff to determine next steps on how to ensure she was being properly medicated. They also failed to evaluate whether she was competent enough to refuse medicine, the lawsuit said.
Corrections officers found her several times covered in her own diarrhea and vomit, and she had to be moved to numerous different clean cells, per the lawsuit. The lawsuit also accuses staff of not conducting proper cell checks on Davis and not looking at her face when she covered it with a smock or blanket.
One staff member allegedly wrote "hopefully, nursing can assess her again."
"Hope is insufficient," plaintiff lawyers wrote.
On March 21, 2023, four days after she entered the jail, a guard checked on Davis in her cell.
"Ms. Davis had been deceased for some time before she was found unresponsive," the lawsuit said. "Ms. Davis's fingers were hard to uncurl to place the pulse oximeter, her mouth was rigid causing difficulty to insert the suction catheter, she was pale, blue, cold, and some parts of her body were yellow as if jaundiced."
Davis died, her lawyers said, after "days of torture and misery."
King County did not immediately respond to an email from Law&Crime seeking comment.
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