Death of Seattle Detainee—Jailed Despite Not Being “Grounded in Reality”—Costs King County $3.5 Million Settlement
by Chuck Sharman
Washington’s King County agreed on May 26, 2025, to pay $3.5 million to Karen Rowland, the widow of a detainee who died in the County jail under a pile-on of guards just hours after his arrest in April 2022. Michael Rowland, 63, was one of five detainees whose deaths were reported over that spring and the prior winter at the two jails operated by the County’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD).
At the time, the detainee population was recovering much more quickly than staffing levels from COVID-19 pandemic lows, and the guard shortage resulted in long lockdowns. The DAJD’s then-director, John Diaz, told the Seattle Times that hiring bonuses up to $15,000 had failed to fill empty guard slots at the lockups, where detainees included many people “suffer[ing] from issues of mental health, addiction, [and] homelessness”—problems which were exacerbated by the pandemic and made worse once jailed in single-bunk cells to maintain social distancing.
Rowland and his wife were separated at the time that he and two other homeless men walked into a downtown Seattle hotel demanding food on April 19, 2022. Seattle cops summoned to the scene noted that his answers to their questions were “not grounded in reality” as he claimed to be a dragon, or a lion, who “ate planets.” One of his companions, whom Rowland held onto by his jacket, told cops that he was being kept in the hotel lobby against his will. Rowland then slapped the companion, and cops arrested him and placed a spit mask over his head before restraining him on a gurney for an ambulance transport to the jail.
Despite his rantings, no one noticed the obvious—that Rowland was “experiencing a significant health crisis and was in need of significant care,” as his widow recalled in the complaint she later filed. Arriving at the jail, his spit mask was removed. But medical staffers failed to conduct a full examination because he threatened to bite them. Guards then took Rowland to a cell to forcibly exchange his clothing for a jail jumpsuit.
The cell was outside the view of surveillance cameras, but a detainee in a nearby cell reported what happened over the next 20 minutes: Rowland lay on his stomach on the floor with one or more guards kneeling atop his back while several others stripped off his clothing and put him in the jumpsuit. Two minutes after the group left him lying on his stomach in the cell, one guard noticed that Rowland was no longer breathing. When emergency resuscitation efforts failed, he was pronounced dead. The County Medical Examiner’s Office described Rowland’s “sudden death during physical restraint,” but the manner of death was listed as “undetermined,” citing co-occurring health factors including cardiovascular disease, obesity and agitation with symptoms of acute psychosis.
Suit Filed, But No
Criminal Charges
In a report issued a year later, in April 2023, the Public Integrity Team of the County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO) found “the evidence is insufficient to support criminal charges against any King County Jail corrections officer (‘CO’) or jail staff.” See: In-Custody Death of Michael Rowland, KCPAO (Apr. 20, 2023).
With the aid of Bellevue attorneys Jess Valdez of Valdez Lehman PLLC and James Bible of his eponymous firm, Rowland’s widow filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in August 2024. The complaint made state-law claims for negligence and wrongful death, as well as claims for violations of Rowland’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A fourth claim sought to hold the County liable for maintaining a custom or policy that caused the constitutional violations, as provided under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978).
Defendant County officials moved to dismiss the last claim, and the district court agreed on March 15, 2025, that the Estate “fail[ed] to sufficiently plead any longstanding custom or express policy, training program deficiency, or policymaker ratification that would establish such a claim.” Dismissal was granted with leave to amend by March 28, which the Clerk recorded as “5/28,” an error that was later corrected. When the Estate did not meet the March 28 deadline, the district court found it had not exercised sufficient due diligence to qualify for exemption, so the motion to amend was denied on August 18. See: Est. of Rowland v. King Cty., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47263 (W.D. Wash.); and)2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159814 (W.D. Wash.).
The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. Under its terms, the County paid the Estate $3.5 million to resolve all claims, including costs and fees for Plaintiff’s attorneys. See: Rowland v. King Cty., USDC (W.D. Wash.), Case No. 2:24-cv-01240.
As PLN reported, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit less than a year after Rowland’s death, accusing the County of violating promises in 1998’s “Hammer Agreement” to properly identify and classify violent, assaultive and aggressive prisoners, using that classification to ensure appropriate housing decisions. County officials blamed guard vacancies, which had risen to nearly 29%. When County judges refused to subject some crime suspects to those conditions and began to release them on lower-than-usual bail, local officials scrambled to send more detainees to the South County Correctional Entity (SCORE), a lockup operated by six suburban Seattle cities. However, that jail and its contracted private healthcare provider, Wellpath, were both slammed in February 2025 for a soaring rate of six deaths in just 11 months—most likely robbing King County of that particular answer to its jail crisis. [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.8; and May 2025, p.53.]
Additional source: Seattle Times
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