A jail health care provider remains at the center of controversial detainee deaths in multiple counties.
Turn Key Health Clinics gave the Oklahoma County Jail Trust notice that it will stop providing services in 30 days, The Oklahoman reported, following weeks of debate by trust members over whether to continue using Turn Key’s services. The company has been accused of maintaining horrific conditions in the jail and the high rate of detainee deaths.
In Cleveland County, Shannon Hanchett’s widower refiled a federal lawsuit that now includes detailed allegations of abuse and lack of medical care that led to the Norman woman’s death. Turn Key is also the medical services provider at the Cleveland County jail.
As Keaton Ross reported, U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Jones dismissed Daniel Hanchett’s lawsuit but gave him a Sept. 9 deadline to refile if he could better show that staff willfully mistreated his late wife. The plaintiff obtained more than a week’s worth of video footage, which he described in gruesome detail in his amended complaint.
Cleveland County has refused to provide the video to Oklahoma Watch, claiming it is exempt from the state’s Open Records Act. In June, Judge Jones signed a protective order agreed to by both sides that prevents parties to the case from publicly disclosing any material that is not an open record under state law. Oklahoma Watch contends the video is subject to the Open Records Act.
The amended complaint seeks to hold Cleveland County officials and Turn Key Health Clinics liable for unconstitutional living conditions and deliberate indifference, said Daniel Smolen, a Tulsa-based civil rights attorney representing Daniel Hanchett. Smolen claims that financial incentives and a lack of staff training contributed to several deaths of mentally ill detainees at jails staffed by Turn Key Health Clinics personnel over the past decade.
“She was treated in a truly inhumane way,” Smolen said. “It [the video footage] really shows how preventable her death was.”
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The longest U.S. jail term for a single person on multiple counts was given to Oklahoma child rapist Charles Scott Robinson in 1994. Robinson received a sentence of 30,000 years — 5,000 for each of the six counts against him. He is incarcerated at the Great Plains Correctional Center in Hinton.
Ciao for now,
Ted Streuli
Executive Director, Oklahoma Watch
tstreuli@oklahomawatch.org
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