by Chuck Sharman

On April 3, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon granted dismissal to a complaint filed by the mother of a state prisoner who died by suicide in a solitary confinement cell, after she accepted $2.3 million from the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to resolve her claims that officials failed to treat his deteriorating mental health and even taunted him with prompts to “just kill yourself.”

The prisoner, Grayson Allen James Painter, 22, was homeless and on probation from a 2022 sentence for felony assault on a peace officer when he was accused of misdemeanor resisting arrest and booked into the Washington County Jail (WCJ) on May 4, 2023. He had already spent a total of more than six months at the jail over the previous 19 months, according to the complaint later filed on his behalf, and jailers had documented his mental health struggles—stemming from a 2019 traumatic brain injury, his family said—keeping him on suicide watch a total of 59 days. Now back at the jail, Painter was returned to suicide watch three more times before his transfer to DOC custody on May 24 for the probation violation.

Arriving at the Coffee Creek Intake Center (CCIC), Painter described his delusions to a mental health Nurse Practitioner, also relaying two recent suicide attempts made while in segregation in the WCJ. His medical history was also reviewed, including “numerous hospital encounters in the past for suicidal ideation and psychosis,” the complaint recalled, which were often marked by “visual and auditory hallucinations.” CCIC staff also noted that “being held in segregated holding cells increased his hallucinations and delusions.”

Upon transfer to Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI) on June 28, Painter was placed in the mental health unit. But he was transferred the next day to the Disciplinary Segregation Unit (DSU) on suspicion of possessing “intoxicants” and placed in solitary confinement inside a “black box”—a six-by-nine-foot cell with only a tiny window for light. He was also ordered to produce a urine sample. When he began banging his head against the cell wall, guards Sgts. Timothy Dyer and Joshua Ahn threatened him with pepper spray and transferred him to another cell monitored by a surveillance camera.

A fellow prisoner later recalled that DSU guards taunted Painter, calling him names and demanding, “Why don’t you just kill yourself, motherfucker?” Reduced to tearful sobs, Painter quickly began to behave so erratically that within 20 minutes a guard recorded he was “unable to assess [Painter’s] level of functioning.” Another 40 minutes after that, a different guard noted that Painter was “throwing water around his cell,” whose camera had ceased to function.

But no one fixed the camera, or moved Painter to a cell with one that was operating. Nor was any attempt made to treat his evident mental health crisis. Less than two and a half hours later, he was found unresponsive and hanging from a bedsheet tied to the cell bars. Guards shackled his legs as he was cut down from the makeshift noose, but he never regained consciousness before emergency responders arrived and pronounced him dead. His urinalysis later came back negative for drugs.

Forced to Cough Up Employee Records, DOC Settles

With the aid of attorneys from the Oregon Justice Resource Center (OJRC), Painter’s mother, Jennifer Painter, filed suit as Personal Representative of his Estate in December 2024. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, she accused DOC staffers of violating his Eighth Amendment rights with deliberate indifference to his serious mental health need by throwing him in solitary instead of offering him treatment. Given his documented history of worsening suicidal ideation while in segregation, this amounted to deliberate indifference to his substantial risk of suicide, the complaint alleged. It also made claims for state torts.

The parties proceeded to discovery, but they reached an impasse over Plaintiff’s demand for the employment records of named DOC Defendants. At least one of the guard sergeants involved was disciplined for skipping required 30-minute cell checks the evening that Painter died, but he was allowed to retire instead and still works as a guard at Oregon State Hospital, the OJRC found. However, the prison system called requests for earlier information irrelevant and argued that it was protected by confidentiality laws. The district court agreed that Plaintiff needed to know whether any Defendant had prior history of the sort of misconduct she accused them of, and it partially granted her motion to that extent on November 21, 2025. See: Est. of Painter v. Oregon, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 229380 (D. Or.).

It was unclear if the records revealed a pattern of taunting and ignoring the needs of suicidal prisoners in solitary. But the DOC quickly reached a large settlement, paying Plaintiff $2,300,333 to dismiss her claims. The payout also included costs and fees for her OJRC attorneys, Juan C. Chavez, Hannah Bland and Walter F. Fonseca. See: Est. of Painter v. Oregon, USDC (D. Or.), Case No. 6:24-cv-02042.

“At the exact moment when Grayson Painter needed help, the [DOC] chose punishment instead of treatment,” Chavez told KGW in Portland. “He was in a crisis but instead of taking measures to protect him, they put him in a dark hole where his cries for help couldn’t be heard.”

The OJRC sued the DOC in 2022, trying to stop prisoners from being placed in DSU for more than 15 consecutive days. But the state Court of Appeal agreed with the DOC that the case was mooted because it challenged a rule that had since been changed—from a maximum 180-day solitary confinement to 90 days, that is. In its ruling on March 12, 2025, the Court also refused to find that DSU placement violated the DOC’s statutory mandate to mete out “appropriate punishment” for disciplinary infractions. It further rejected a constitutional challenge, saying that the required investigation into the effects of solitary confinement was so fact-intensive that it was “unsuitable for facial review.” A request for the state Supreme Court to hear an appeal was then denied on September 18, 2025. See: Or. Just. Res. Ctr. v. Or. Dep’t of Corr., 338 Or. App. 643 (2025); and 374 Or. 372 (2025).  

Additional source: KGW

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