$42,000 Paid to Wisconsin Prisoner Allowed to Harm Himself While Under Observation
On November 19, 2024, the State of Wisconsin paid $42,000 to settle a trio of lawsuits filed by a state prisoner making claims of excessive force and deliberate indifference to his medical needs.
Waupun Correctional Institution prisoner Kurtis D. Jones engaged in an “inappropriate relationship” with an unspecified staffer in the Psychological Services Unit (PSU), but the relationship “ended badly,” he wrote in a letter to PLN.
According to his complaints, he got possession of a toothpaste tube cap in March 2022 and used it to cut at his arm on his artery. When guards found him, they doused him with O.C. spray to force him to let a nurse treat his wound, after which they refused to let him shower it off before strapping him onto a restraint table, he said. He was then left tied down for the next 40 hours. As Jones explained regarding the PSU staffer’s involvement in his ordeal, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
When finally removed from the table, Jones was placed under direct observation for threats of self-harm. However, in February 2023, he was allegedly allowed access to razors and—no surprise—used them to cut himself, slicing into two arteries and sending him to the hospital. Worse, as recalled in the complaints he later filed, this occurred with the knowledge of staff, who were supposed to continuously observe him. Instead, he said, they shrugged off his self-mutilation and walked away, later “cover[ing] up evidence” that they saw the razors and the blood on his body from the cuts he made with them.
After exhausting his administrative remedies, Jones filed suit—three suits between April 2023 and January 2024—accusing DOC staffers of using excessive force when they pepper-sprayed him and left him restrained to a table for over a day and a half, as well as displaying deliberate indifference to his serious risk of self-harm by ignoring the razors they saw in his hand when he was supposed to be under close observation, all in violation of his Eighth Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment.
The federal court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin consolidated all three cases into a single mediation between Jones and the DOC in October 2024, when Jones also picked up representation from attorney Lonnie D. Story of Daytona Beach, Florida. The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, which included costs and fees for Story. See: Jones v. Kijek, USDC (E.D. Wisc.), Case No. 2:23-cv-00651; Jones v. Krueger, USDC (E.D. Wisc.), Case No. 2:23-cv-01153; and Jones v. Marwitz, USDC (E.D. Wisc.), Case No. 2:23-cv-00055.
Located just outside of Green Bay, Waupun had 11 staffers who were fired or resigned in the wake of a federal probe sparked by a spate of seven prisoner deaths in just two years, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.33.] Now-retired Warden Randall Hepp was charged with felony misconduct in office, but he took a deal in April 2025 to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating state and county institution laws, avoiding any cell time and paying a $500 fine. As PLN also reported, a similar sentence was handed down in September 2024 to former guard Sarah Ann Margaret Ransbottom, 36, except her fine was just $250. She was one of eight former prison staffers charged in addition to Hepp; cases against the others remain pending. [See: PLN, June 2025, p.40.]
Additional source: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel