by Chuck Sharman

Relatives of a Missouri jail detainee who became nonverbal and fatally ill—while fellow detainees pleaded in vain with jailers to get him medical help—accepted a $450,000 settlement of their federal civil rights suit, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri granted it dismissal on September 25, 2025.

The suit was filed in 2024 by Daniel Busby and Laura Jungers, siblings of the dead man, Robert Charles Busby. He was arrested in Iron County on July 20, 2023. But the Iron County Jail had been shuttered earlier that year when former Sheriff Jeff Burkett was arrested, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2024, p.35.] As a result, Iron County Sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Benjamin Moody brought Busby to the Wayne County Jail in Greenville.

A medical questionnaire completed at Busby’s booking “noted [nothing] regarding fever, infection, trauma, illness, or skin marks,” according to the complaint later filed on his behalf. “Additionally, there was nothing noted regarding medical illness or conditions.” But six days later, he was so ill that fellow detainees “are telling us he is having trouble breathing,” as jailer Chris Schultz wrote in an email to Sgt. Moody.

“We went in and checked his [blood oxygen] saturation, which was 93 percent,” Schultz added. “Not life threatening, but not good either.” He advised Moody that the jail nurse’s next visit was a week away and asked if Moody wanted “to do something with [Busby].”

The following day, detainee Daniel Reyes filed a formal jail grievance, noting that “Busby is not eating or drinking” and “has soiled himself with both liquid and solid matter,” but he “is not able to shower unassisted and has defecated in the shower multiple times.” Reyes pleaded with jailers to get medical help for Busby because “[n]o offender is authorized nor trained to meet his requirements.”

The day after that, on Friday, July 28, 2023, Schultz again emailed Moody to relay the contents of Reyes’ grievance and added, “I’m beginning to think [Busby] needs to be in a nursing home rather than in a jail.” Moody replied that he would advise the court, which told him to contact Busby’s public defender. Moody said that he did. But no one came to help Busby.

The next morning, Wayne County Jail detainee Abram Colburn filed another grievance, warning that “this will be very serious concern for [Busby] having diarea [sic] and not eating or drinking can dehydrate a person to the point to cause the body to shut down and cause serious problems”—on top of which Colburn and other detainees were “forced to breath and eat in these conditions,” which he called “cruel and unusual punishment.”

“A Liability for Our Jail”

Again Schultz advised Moody, this time adding that Busby had become “a liability for our jail and we cannot continue to house him.” But no reply came before Reyes filed another grievance on Sunday morning. “Busby has all indications of suffering from a stroke,” he wrote. “His speech is incoherent and unintelligible,” and he “cannot stand unassisted and is unaware of his location” as well as being “not in control of his bodily fluids and has soiled himself multiple times.” Reyes said that he and other detainees “are doing their best to accommodate Mr. Busby’s needs,” but he “requires medically trained personal” because “I have to spoon feed him, his hands shake uncontrollably and misses his mouth. His appetite is very low, only eating a few bites before he refuses to eat.”

Moody finally replied to Schultz on Monday, July 31, 2023, saying that he was trying to arrange for Busby to go somewhere else. That same day, public defender Ayla Chadbourne wrote to ask Iron County Circuit Judge Megan Seay to release Busby on a medical furlough or else order Wayne County jailers to get him medical attention. Judge Seay issued the furlough, and an ambulance fetched Busby, dropping him off at Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center. But it was too late. He was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, where he remained sedated and intubated until he died 16 days later.

With the aid of Poplar Bluff attorney Stephen E. Walsh and St. Louis attorney John S. Steward, Busby’s siblings filed their suit in the district court. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, they lodged deliberate indifference claims against Wayne County and Sheriff Dean Finch, along with his jailers, as well as Iron County, Moody and Sheriff Burkett, who was by then in jail and would soon resign.

Only the Wayne County Defendants remained when the parties reached their settlement agreement; the Iron County Defendants had already been dismissed in February 2025, pursuant to Plaintiffs’ stipulation. Under the agreement’s terms, Wayne County paid $450,000, including $6,242.30 in costs and $180,000 in fees to Plaintiffs’ counsel, plus another $263,757.70 split evenly between the two Plaintiffs. See: Busby v. Wayne Cty., USDC (E.D. Mo.), Case No. 1:24-­cv-­00111.

“The other inmates were very vocal and very forceful” in their complaints to Wayne County jailers on Busby’s behalf, Walsh told Missouri Lawyers Media, “but despite that, they didn’t do anything for him for four or five days.” The attorney added: “These country jails … are just tragedies waiting to happen because they don’t train sufficiently.”  

Additional source: Missouri Lawyers Media

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