by Chuck Sharman

Claims filed over a trio of detainee murders at the Oklahoma County Detention Center survived motions to dismiss in March 2025. As PLN reported, the lockup was stripped from control of the Sheriff’s Office in 2020, operating since under the County Criminal Justice Authority (CJA). But it has continued to suffer severe overcrowding, with as many as 2,400 to 2,800 detainees confined in a crumbling four-decade-old building designed to house just 1,200; one activist and former detainee called the conditions there “medieval.” [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.1.]

Andrew Avelar

A motion by CJA to dismiss the first suit was denied by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on March 5, 2025, leaving Plaintiff Rodolfo Avelar to proceed with claims that jailers violated the civil rights of his son, Andrew, when they failed to prevent his fatal strangulation on February 26, 2022. The younger Avelar, 27, had warned at intake that other detainees had threatened his life. Though he was placed under protective custody in isolation, he was found hanging dead from a bedsheet in his cell.

A detainee in a nearby cell passed a note to guards advising that Avelar had been murdered by an unnamed fellow detainee. But an autopsy blamed the death on “probable asphyxiation due to hanging,” and jailers chalked it up to suicide. Avelar’s family then had a second autopsy privately conducted which found “ligature compression of the neck with other injuries not inconsistent with struggle,” as the district court later recalled. As a result, the second autopsy concluded the manner of death was “not inconsistent with homicide.”

In the suit filed over his son’s death, Avelar claimed that CJA and the County were liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his Fourteenth Amendment rights, either (a) by failing to protect him from a risk of murder that he warned them about or, if indeed he committed suicide, (b) by failing to provide treatment for his serious medical need. In support of both, the complaint pointed to numerous deficiencies in the jail’s physical condition tied to its chronic understaffing, including “evidence that inmates ‘routinely’ break holes in the walls and tunnel between cells and that ‘site checks, required under jail regulations, have not been adequate and falsified site checks have led to deaths in the jail.’”

Defendants argued that a 2008 report on which Avelar partially relied was “stale,” but the district court said that the report’s age only served to bolster Plaintiff’s claims that the jail’s problems are “longstanding.” Accordingly, the motion to dismiss was denied. Avelar is represented by attorneys with Whitten Burrage in Tulsa and All Rise PLLC in Oklahoma City. See: Avelar v. Okla. Cnty. Crim. Just. Auth., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 39450 (W.D. Okla.); and 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 39453 (W.D. Okla.).

Brad Lane

Next, the district court denied CJA’s motion to dismiss claims filed by Austin Bond, the personal representative of the Estate of Brad Lane, a detainee who was brutally beaten to death with his own medical boot on January 2, 2021.

Only one guard was on duty that evening on the floor where Lane was housed in a cell with Shaquile Brown—and that guard took off for an hour to take care of other pressing needs in the understaffed lockup. A detainee in a neighboring cell, Jose Hernandez, heard the sounds of a struggle coming from Lane and Brown’s cell and—incredibly—“popped” the lock on his own cell door to go investigate. There he found Brown bludgeoning Lane with his own medical boot, while Lane attempted to use his mattress to protect himself.

Hernandez attempted to summon help, but no one answered his calls. So he called his unincarcerated girlfriend and asked her to try. No one answered her calls, either. Hernandez then tried to disarm Brown of Lane’s medical boot, but Brown overpowered him and took it back, continuing his beat-down. Only when the guard finally returned to the floor was the beating interrupted. By then it was too late, though; Lane lay dead in his cell.

After his § 1983 suit was filed, Plaintiff supplied depositions from guards who testified to “crazy low” staffing levels, as one put it; instead of the 192 staffers needed, the jail had just 77, leaving just nine to 13 guards on duty during any given shift to supervise 1,400 to 1,700 detainees in the area where Lane was held. In its order on March 11, 2025, the district court had no trouble denying a motion to dismiss deliberate indifference claims against CJA. However, the court said that Plaintiff had failed to sustain his burden regarding claims against the County, so those were dismissed. Bond is represented in his suit by attorneys with Smollen & Roytman PLLC in Tulsa. See: Bond v. Okla. Cnty. Crim. Just. Auth., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43682 (W.D. Okla.)

Shawn Slavens

On March 27, 2025, claims got the green light to proceed against the County and CJA in yet another suit, this one filed by Laura Neal, Administrator of the Estate of Shawn Slavens. His bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were known to jailers when he was last admitted on June 24, 2022—because it was his third incarceration in just four days. A nurse for jail medical contractor Turn Key Health cleared Slavens for placement in the general population, even though she had conducted his first intake a few days earlier and placed him on mental health observation “because he was incoherent, distracted, and was nonsensical in his speech,” as the district court later recalled.

Slavens, 46, was celled with Alfred Means, “a known violent offender with multiple prior convictions for violent crimes.” When Means summoned guards in the middle of the night to report that he’d broken his hand in a fight with his cellmate, they arrived to find Slavens “covered in blood, barely breathing, and unresponsive.” He died at a hospital days later. Means, 54, was charged with the murder in August 2022.

Also with the aid of attorneys from Smolen & Roytman PLLC in Tulsa, Neal filed her suit pursuant to § 1983, accusing CJA and Turn Key Health personnel of deliberate indifference to his health and safety by failing to protect him from Means, in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights. The County and CJA were further accused under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), of training and supervision failures, as well as maintaining an unofficial policy of understaffing, all of which led to Slavens’ murder. On March 27, 2025, the district court adopted the recommendation of a magistrate judge and dismissed all claims except the one under Monell for maintaining an unofficial policy of understaffing. See: Neal v. Okla. Cnty. Crim. Just. Auth., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57278 (W.D. Okla.).

All three suits are currently headed to trial, and PLN will continue to update developments.

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