Nearly $70,000 Awarded for Illinois Prisoner’s Excessive Force Claim
On October 24, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois entered judgment awarding $69,384.73 to a state prisoner in his civil rights action alleging a Department of Corrections (DOC) food service director subjected him to excessive force over a grievance filed against him. The judgment included damages awarded by a trial jury and an additional award for attorney fees and costs.
Prisoner Jeremiah Fallon, then 35, filed a grievance on September 19, 2019, alleging that food service supervisors at Pontiac Correctional Center (PCC) fed prisoners cereal that they knew was contaminated by mice droppings. The next day, Food Service Director Dean Wessels confronted Fallon in the prison’s kitchen, where he “got in (his) face, and screamed and cursed at him,” Fallon’s civil rights complaint recalled. After Fallon admitted filing the grievance, Wessels told Fallon that he was fired and demanded he leave the kitchen immediately.
Fallon walked into the adjoining hallway. But the gate was locked, so he remained there. Wessels saw him, screamed at him, and demanded to know why he had not left. Surveillance video captured what happened next as Wessels violently slammed Fallon into the locked gates, “causing extreme pain and injury to (Fallon’s) head and left eye.” But the staffer made no attempt to obtain medical treatment for the prisoner.
On the Sunday following Wessels’ attack, after receiving calls about it from Fallon’s family, PCC Warden Teri Kennedy visited Fallon’s cell and apologized, the prisoner said. Kennedy also told Fallon that he should “leave it alone,” promising if he did that he would get a new job. The next day, he received a new job assignment in the prison gym.
Nevertheless, the prisoner reported the abuse and was interviewed on October 1, 2019, by Lt. J. Anglin from DOC’s Internal Affairs Office. Shown the video, Fallon was asked what he and Wessels were doing at various points during playback. Yet Anglin did not offer to obtain medical treatment for Fallon, who still had blood in his eye and a knot on his head, he said. Anglin convened a subsequent meeting at which he also told Fallon to let the matter go, warning that it was not in his best interest to pursue it.
Not taking that advice, Fallon secured representation from Northbrook attorney Jordan E. Marsh, who filed a federal civil rights action on his behalf on February 22, 2021, alleging Eighth Amendment violations for Wessels’ use of excessive force and for Wessels and Anglin’s failure to provide medical care for the injuries he incurred from Wessels’ attack. The case proceeded to a jury trial.
The jury returned its verdict on May 30, 2024, finding Wessels guilty of using excessive force and awarding Fallon $10,000 in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages. The jury found in favor of Wessels and Anglin on the failure-to-treat claim. In its October 2024 amended judgment, the district court awarded $35,791.95 in attorney fees and $3,593.08 in costs to Fallon’s counsel. See: Fallon v. Wessels, USDC (C.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:21-cv-01066.
Prisoners everywhere complain of poor food, and not without cause, when prison systems pay as little as $1 per meal. But lawsuits rarely get anywhere—except at PCC, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit agreed with another prisoner that multiple reports of “mice droppings, mice, and cockroaches literally in and on the food” could lead a jury to “conclude that the risk of harm … is both substantial and obvious.” [See: PLN, May 2024, p.1.] Before eventually reaching a settlement, the plaintiff in that suit, Mark Byrd, successfully forced DOC to cough up Fallon’s grievance, along with video of the assault by Wessels that it provoked, on February 7, 2020. Marsh represented the prisoner in that case, too. See: Byrd v. Hobart, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 265819 (C.D. Ill.).
Related legal case
Fallon v. Wessels
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (C.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:21-cv-01066 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Settlement |