by Chuck Sharman

Meeting at the courthouse in Wilkes-­Barre, Pennsylvania, the Luzerne County Council approved three settlements in November 2024, totaling $645,330 in payouts on behalf of three former detainees at the Luzerne County Prison—two of whom committed suicides that jailers allegedly failed to prevent. That was on top of a $780,000 settlement approved the year before for another detainee’a unprevented suicide, pushing total payouts to $1,425,330.

Under terms of the first agreement, approved on November 12, 2025, the County paid $45,330 to Joshua S. Miller, whose federal civil rights suit claimed that he was subjected to a highly invasive strip search in April 2016, when tipped-­off guards found him and five other detainees with suspected contraband drugs after seeing visitors.

Miller, then 28, admitted that guards found and confiscated contraband from his pants. But they then took him to a conference room and strip-­searched him to look for more, leaving him naked and shackled while the door repeatedly opened and closed, exposing him to male and female workers in the office. Finding no more contraband at that point, he said that they ordered him on all fours atop a table and forced him to place his finger into his own anus and mouth—in that order—before one guard held a flashlight directly against his anus to “inspect” it. When that search also turned up no more contraband, they tossed him into a cell in the Restrictive Housing Unit (RHU) without running water or a toilet, leaving him there for three days.

But his ordeal didn’t end there. Guards filed false disciplinary infraction reports that put him back in RHU for lengthy stays until the charges were eventually dismissed. In the jail’s general population, he was assaulted by fellow detainees, after a guard named Cpl. Renfer allegedly guaranteed no punishment “if they fuck [him] up.” His grievances about this went nowhere, he said, just like the report he filed with the prison’s coordinator for the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). He finally prevailed upon a new warden to separate him from the begrudging guards, and Miller was transferred to a state prison the next year. But his requests for the PREA report that was supposedly filed from his complaint went unanswered, he said.

Miller filed suit pro se in 2018 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which eventually granted summary judgment to Defendants on his excessive force claims—but not his First Amendment retaliation claims—on May 2, 2022. Recognizing that the case “may turn on the issue of credibility determinations,” the district court appointed Miller counsel on July 21, 2022. See: Miller v. Luzerne Cty. Dep’t of Corr., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243946 (M.D. Pa.); and 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243942 (M.D. Pa.).

The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, which was inclusive of any costs and fees for Miller’s appointed counsel from attorney Jason E. Piatt of Piatt Law PLLC in Waynesboro. See: Miller v. Luzerne Cty. Dep’t of Corr., USDC (M.D. Pa.), Case No. 3:18-­cv-­00858.

$1,380,000 for Three
Unprevented Suicides

At the same meeting, the Council also approved a $300,000 payout to settle claims by the Estate of Kristen LaSalle that jail officials failed to protect her from the suicide that claimed her life in January 2023. No suit was filed by the Estate, so details are sketchy about LaSalle’s death. What is clear, however, is that she was struggling with substance abuse issues that led to a six-­month probated sentence for a drug paraphernalia conviction in August 2021. She then failed to notify her probation officer when she moved, resulting in an arrest warrant that landed her in the County Prison in October 2021.

LaSalle, 36, attempted suicide in her cell on January 10, 2023, and was transferred to a hospital, where she died. After a threat to sue from the administrator of her Estate, Maureen Norton, the County agreed to the settlement and payout, half of which was paid by the jail’s contracted healthcare provider, Wellpath LLC.

At the Council’s next meeting on November 26, 2024, an agreement was approved under which Wellpath and the County split another $300,000 payout to the Estate of Mercedes Alaimo. Administrator Hollie Baldwin had also threatened to sue over her death in another unprevented suicide at the jail on February 13, 2023. Alaimo, 25, had been booked just two days earlier, Baldwin told the Wilkes-­Barre Times-­Leader. Baldwin said that Alaimo was withdrawing from opioids and clearly didn’t get the medical help needed to do so safely.

The Council approved an even larger settlement of $780,000 at its meeting on March 28, 2023, again split with Wellpath and again paid to the Estate of a jail detainee who committed suicide. Sarah Schiavone and Mickayla Meredick, Administrators of the Estate of Hailey Povisil, filed suit in the district court against the County and Wellpath, accusing them of failure to prevent the 21-­year-­old’s fatal suicide at the lockup in 2018.

Again the death quickly followed booking—in this case coming just three days later. And again the dead detainee was experiencing opioid withdrawal that jailers and Wellpath refused to treat seriously, according to the administrators’ complaint. That was filed in state Court of Common Pleas for Luzerne County in September 2021 and later removed by Defendants to the district court.

Of particular importance to other Pennsylvania detainees in lockups contracting with Wellpath, the district court took note of precedent established by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, holding that a private firm cannot be considered a public entity covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch.126 §§ 12101, et seq., or the Rehabilitation Act (RA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 701, et seq. Plaintiffs’ ADA and RA claims against Wellpath were therefore dismissed on August 5, 2022, though similar claims against the County were sustained. Also sustained were the Estate’s claims against all Defendants for deliberate indifference to Povisil’s serious medical need and their particular indifference to her risk of suicide, in violation of her Eighth Amendment rights. See: Schiavone v. Luzerne Cty., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140054 (M.D. Pa.).

The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, which included costs and fees for the Estate’s attorneys: Barry H. Dyller, of his eponymous law office in Wilkes-­Barre; Tara G. Giarratano, of Hourigan, Kluger and Quinn, P.C. in Kingston; and Theron J. Solomon of Dyller & Solomon, LLC in Wilkes-­Barre, PA 18701. See: Schiavone v. Luzerne Cty., USDC (M.D. Pa.), Case No. 3:21-­cv-­01686.

As Dyller told WIVA in Pittson, his goal is “to shine a spotlight on these failings at the jail.” PLN shares the same goal. 

Additional sources: WIVA, Wilkes-­Barre Times-­Leader

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