$25,000 Paid to Former New York Jail Detainee Subjected to Delayed Healthcare and Denied Mental Healthcare— Despite Seven Suicide Attempts
by Chuck Sharman
At a settlement conference in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York on March 26, 2026, Cayuga County officials agreed to pay $25,000 to settle claims by a former detainee in the county jail, who said that he was subjected to delayed medical care and denied mental healthcare, even after reporting seven prior suicide attempts. The agreement also resolved a separate suit alleging that disciplinary surcharges were imposed on him without due process.
Upon his arrest in January 2022, Johan Alexander Bass told deputies of Sheriff Brian Schenk that he suffered from asthma and was experiencing severe chest pains. He reiterated the same to Schenk’s medical staff at the Cayuga County Jail. Yet he was subject to prolonged isolation while those staffers conducted repeated COVID-19 tests—all of which came back negative, since Bass had already been tested and vaccinated for the disease, as he also told them. Only after 17 days of this was he finally treated with a prescription antibiotic, and his condition began to improve.
Bass also told jailers at intake that he had a history of seven suicide attempts, the most recent just a year earlier. Over the 16 months of his incarceration, he made repeated requests for mental healthcare as “voices” harassed him, the complaint he later filed recalled. Guards even found him banging his head against the cell door. Yet his requests were all dismissed because the jail “is not a treatment center,” staffers told him, adding that they were focused on keeping him “safe from the meth that brought you here.” Bass filed a grievance over the lack of care and pursued it all the way to the state Commission on Corrections, which responded with instructions to Schenk to provide Bass the care he needed. Even then, however, no treatment was forthcoming, Bass said.
During his stint in the jail, Bass also received five disciplinary reports. All were sustained, and he was punished with a garnishment from his commissary account of $25 each time, the complaint continued —despite zero allegations that his behavior had resulted in “loss of, or damage to, jail property.” Nor was any of the charges for a violation of any criminal statute.
He filed his pro se complaint in the district court in June 2023, proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to accuse Schenk and his jail staff of violating Bass’ Fourteenth Amendment rights with their deliberate indifference to his serious medical and mental health needs. He also sought to hold the County liable under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), for permitting its employees to commit these civil rights violations so often as to create a de facto custom or policy.
Bass also sought to add more claims related to the surcharges deducted from his commissary account, but the district court denied his request. He filed an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. But he withdrew it and filed a second complaint in January 2025, accusing the guards who presided over his disciplinary hearings of violating his due process rights when they imposed the surcharges for “arbitrary and purposeless” reasons; in one instance, he said, guards issued him a disciplinary report after Bass said “I love you” to his visiting girlfriend.
The district court dismissed that second complaint with leave to amend. But Bass decided instead to return to the Second Circuit, which considered his appeal proof that he didn’t intend to amend his complaint and accepted it. In its decision on December 22, 2025, the appellate Court agreed that he had stated a plausible claim for a violation of his due process rights with the surcharges. The district court’s order dismissing the claim was thus vacated. See: Bass v. Swartwood, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 33344 (2d Cir.).
That was also sufficient to get Cayuga County officials to the settlement table, where the agreement was hammered out paying $25,000 to Bass. To assist him in the trial that the settlement avoided, the district court also appointed pro bono counsel from attorney Joseph T. Schuler of Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti P.C. in Albany. See: Bass v. Cayuga Cty., USDC (N.D.N.Y.), Case No. 9:22-cv-01107; and Bass v. Swartwood, USDC (N.D.N.Y.), Case No. 9:25-cv-00082.
Bass, now 49, was incarcerated on suspicion of robbing a Key Bank branch in Auburn. He pleaded guilty to third-degree robbery and spent two years in state prison before his 2025 parole, the Finger Lakes Daily News reported. For prosecuting both cases pro se—taking one before the Second Circuit—Bass deserves considerable credit.
Additional source: Finger Lakes Daily News
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