On April 9, 2025, Defendant Connecticut prison officials lost their second attempt to dismiss a lawsuit filed over the death of prisoner J’Allen Jones, 31, following an altercation with guards at Garner Correctional Institution on March 25, 2018.

Jones, who had schizophrenia, was having a psychotic episode when he reportedly resisted a strip search. Prison staff said that he began“screaming, shouting and chanting, very loudly.” Guards struck Jones with their knees and fists while he was handcuffed, before deploying OC spray and holding him down naked to put a spit mask over his face. He was moved to another cell, where medical staff injected him with a sedative; he stopped breathing, became unresponsive and died a short time later. The entire incident was recorded on the prison’s surveillance video.

The medical examiner determined that the death was a homicide caused “during struggle and restraint with chest compression and pepper spray exposure … with hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.”

The prisoner’s family filed suit in Hartford Superior Court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Plaintiffs tried to have the video footage made public, but the office of state Attorney General William Tong (D), who was representing Defendant guards and nurses, objected to releasing the video. Tong claimed it would “severely impair the safety and security” of state prisons and “lead to significant media attention … that obviously would prejudice or otherwise influence prospective jurors.”

In response, attorneys representing Jones’ estate argued that “defendants’ rationalizations for the protective order are a pretext to disguise the horrific treatment of mental health inmates,” and they added that the video showed “a glaring human rights violation that is all too common in the Connecticut Department of Corrections.”

The lawsuit accused prison staff of waiting over seven minutes after Jones became unresponsive before taking lifesaving measures, including CPR. Defendants claimed that Jones’ death was due to a “very complex sequence of events,” and that the conduct of one of the nurses present during the incident “amounted to negligence at worst.” They moved for summary judgment, relying heavily on the video footage; it was cited over 40 times in a memorandum of law in support of their motion.

After it was filed in court as an exhibit in the case on September 27, 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Connecticut requested a copy of the video. That request was denied despite the fact that neither party in the case had asked that the evidence be sealed. The ACLU then sought review of the denial at the Connecticut Appellate Court, pursuant to Conn. Gen. Stat. § 51-164x, arguing that the public had a right to disclosure of the video. On October 25, 2024, that Court remanded the request back to the trial court to hold a hearing on the protective order sealing the video evidence, as required under state Practice Book § 11-20. See: Richardson v. Semple, Conn. App., Case No. AC 242687.

Meanwhile, Defendants moved to dismiss the estate’s lawsuit for lack of standing, contending that Jones’ fiancé, Lynette Richardson, was not properly appointed estate administrator. In a ruling on December 9, 2024, the trial court denied that motion. It agreed that the probate court which appointed Richardson lacked jurisdiction because Jones had not been “domiciled” at the Garner prison there. However, the court said that Defendants “failed to meet the threshold issue” of proving that Richardson had some intent to defraud the probate court, when all evidence showed she filed in good faith. See: Richardson v. Semple, 2024 Conn. Super. LEXIS 2593 (Super. Ct.).

Defendants requested and won a rehearing on their motion to dismiss, but it was denied again on April 9, 2025. By then, a motion to intervene by the ACLU had also been denied on January 23, 2025, sending the group to the Appellate Court to hear its request. The ACLU appeal is still pending, as is Richardson’s suit. PLN will share updates from both cases as they become available. Richardson and Jones’ estate are represented by attorneys with Spinella & Associates in Hartford. See: Richardson v. Semple, Conn. Super. (Hartford Jud. Dist.), Case No. HHD-CV-18-6098918-S; and Conn. App., Case No. 48427.  

Additional source: Hartford Courant

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