$6 Million Settlement with Washington DOC for Delayed Treatment That Let Prisoner’s Liver Cancer Become Fatal
by Chuck Sharman
Under terms of a settlement reached in September 2025, Washington agreed to pay $6 million to the surviving daughter of a state prisoner who accused the state Department of Corrections (DOC) of failing to treat his liver cancer, allowing it to progress and kill him in November 2023.
Michael Sublett, then 48, was incarcerated by the DOC after his conviction in the 2007 robbery and murder of retiree Jerry Totten, 69. Sublett’s girlfriend, April Frazier, 47 at the time of the killing, had been living in a trailer in Totten’s yard after the three met at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and she provided testimony at trial of Sublett and co-defendant Christopher Lee Olsen, 28, who was also convicted.
By May 2022, Sublett was confined at Monroe Correctional Complex when he began to experience “unintentional weight loss, abdominal pain, profound fatigue, and loss of appetite,” according to the complaint later filed on his behalf. When a blood test revealed a low platelet count, DOC doctors referred him for an “urgent” consultation with a specialist in hematology and oncology.
It took nearly three weeks for that consultation to occur. Sublett was recommended for imaging scans, but he first had to wait an extra 18 days for another consult with DOC medical providers. It then took 30 days more to get an ultrasound at an outside imaging center—in July 2022, almost 10 weeks after he first presented to DOC doctors with his symptoms. Immediately after the scan, a radiologist read the results and discovered a one-centimeter (about one-quarter-inch) mass on Sublett’s liver.
The radiologist recommended endoscopic testing. However, the prisoner was again forced to wait for several more months. By mid-November 2022, his symptoms were serious enough for DOC medical providers to send him to a hospital. There, he underwent another ultrasound that was “technically poor and unrevealing,” the complaint continued. But given the earlier finding, a CT scan was recommended. Once more the recommendation was not acted upon by DOC personnel.
In March 2023, Sublett was finally sent to an outside clinic for the endoscopy that had originally been recommended the previous summer. A physician “noted that the one cm mass detected back in July 2022 had ‘never been investigated with further imaging’ even though a ‘dedicated CT evaluation had been recommended,’” according to the complaint. That physician “took it upon himself to order the long-delayed CT scan,” which “was finally carried out on March 17, 2023, more than seven and a half months after it was first recommended.”
Unsurprisingly, the mass had grown—undergoing a twelve-fold increase in size, it now measured 12 centimeters (nearly five inches) in diameter. Sadly, the complaint noted, Sublett’s liver cancer “had progressed to the point where a once-open window for viable life-saving or life-extending treatment had now effectively closed.” Over the following eight months, he “struggled for life and slowly declined as the effects of the cancer took its toll.” He died on November 20, 2023, at age 64.
His daughter, Lauren Michael Russell, with counsel from attorneys with Budge & Heipt PLLC in Seattle, filed suit in state Superior Court for King County in October 2024, seeking to hold the state and its DOC liable for the treatment delay that caused Sublett’s death. The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. PLN was unable to obtain a copy, but a $6 million payout was reported by the Seattle Times on September 20, 2025. Journalist Jim Brunner also found copies of a grievance that Sublett filed and a response from DOC Assistant Secretary Mark R. Eliason on August 15, 2023. On behalf of the prison system, he asked Sublett to “[p]lease accept our apologies for the delay in reviewing your initial ultrasound findings,” also promising that “appropriate action has been taken in an attempt to prevent this issue from occurring in the future.”
The prisoner was dead just over three months later.
Additional source: Seattle Times
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