$2.5 Million Settlement After South Carolina Jail Detainee Lost 2 Lbs.Per Day and Died
by Anthony W. Accurso
A settlement filed in federal court for the District of South Carolina on September 3, 2024, brought a resolution to a lawsuit filed by the survivors of a Greenville jail detainee who lost over two pounds a day and died.
After he allegedly fired gunshots into a neighbor’s home, Kenneth Lashon Tucker, 45, was arrested and booked into the Greenville County Detention Center (GCDC) on August 14, 2020. There he continued displaying abnormal behavior; jail staff described him as “psychotic, confused, and disoriented.”
However, he was not medically evaluated for seven days. When he was finally seen by Ernest Martin, M.D., Tucker was prescribed one medication. But he never received a dose of it. By August 30, 2020, the detainee presented a “distressed medical condition,” medical staff noted, including “complaints of chest pain, unstable blood pressure, a high pulse rate, an abnormal EKG and a high respiration rate,” according to the complaint later filed on his behalf. He was also “incoherent, weak, unable to stand, and unable to walk.”
When she filed that suit, his wife, Johnnie Gary Tucker, complained that jailers failed to provide her husband with “proper medical care,” or “emergency medical care” or even “transfer to a facility for emergency medical care.” Instead, she noted, “GCDC staff simply returned him to his cell.” There he was found unresponsive on August 31, 2020, and pronounced dead the following day.
Worse was the fact that Tucker, who weighed 200 pounds upon entering the GCDC, tipped the scales at only 164 pounds when autopsied on September 1, 2020, the morning after his death. He had lost 36 pounds in just over 17 days of incarceration, mainly due to dehydration. Furthermore, she continued, “[m]any of the progress notes of the medical and mental health staff of GCDC related to assessments of Mr. Tucker were not created until after his death.” Why? Because “medical staff did not properly document his vital signs,” instead piecing together data later from “videos and statements of the detention and medical staff of GCDC.”
Johnnie Tucker filed the suit in state court against the County, several jailers and medical staffers, as well as Prisma Health-Upstate, the contracted private provider of medical “care” to GCDC prisoners. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, she sought to hold them liable for her husband’s medical neglect and wrongful death, arguing that his easily preventable dehydration had caused the excessive weight loss, which in turn was blamed for his fatal pulmonary thromboembolism.
Attorney David R. Price Jr. of Price P.A. in Greenville, who represented the widow in her suit, said jailers “understood that [Tucker] was having psychic episodes, and they just didn’t sufficiently address that.” On September 1, 2020, the day before he died, Tucker “was having a health crisis at that point,” the attorney said, and jail staff “had an opportunity to get him medical care, send him to the hospital, and they didn’t do it.”
After Defendants removed the case to federal court, the parties proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. Of the $2.5 million total payout, the County paid $750,000, and its insurer, the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund, paid another $1.3 million on its behalf. Prisma Health-Upstate kicked in the next $175,000, and American Casualty Company of Reading, Pennsylvania, paid the remaining $275,000 on behalf of GCDC mental health specialist Laura Miller, who saw Tucker several times during his detention yet failed to diagnose or treat his mental health crisis.
The settlement included no admission of liability by Defendants. Under its terms, 40% of the total payout—$1 million— was paid in fees to Price and the Estate’s other attorney, Woodrow G. Jordan of Smith Jordan, P.A. in Easley; they were also reimbursed costs of $141,404.67. Greenville County EMS was reimbursed $588.08, and Johnnie Tucker was reimbursed $10,000 for her late husband’s funeral expenses.
Of the remaining $1,348,007.25, Johnnie Tucker received 5% as the Estate’s Personal Representative, plus 50% of the balance, for a total of $730,253.70; the remainder was split evenly between the children she and the detainee shared, Kendrick Tucker and Johnniqua Tucker, who each received $308,876.85. See: Tucker v. Greenville Cty., USDC (D.S.C.), Case No. 2:22-cv-02389.
Additional sources: Greenville News, WSPA
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