by Chuck Sharman

The Board of Commissioners of Oklahoma’s Cleveland County approved a $20 million settlement on September 8, 2026, resolving claims filed on behalf of Shannon Hanchett, 38, a “floridly psychotic” detainee who died of dehydration in the County Detention Center in 2022, according to the complaint filed on her behalf. It was among the largest jail death settlements in state history, according to attorneys for her Estate, who also secured a $33 million payout for the death of Terral Ellis in the Cleveland County Jail and $13.5 million for Angela Liggans’ death in the Wagoner County Jail.

Hanchett, the owner of a popular Norman bakery—she was known as the “cookie queen”—sought medical treatment for severe headaches in October 2022, her Estate’s complaint recalled. Though a CT scan found no abnormalities, she “began to exhibit signs of mental illness consistent with bipolar disorder and/or schizophrenia.” A month later, under a paranoid delusion that her husband had tapped her cellphone, Hanchett went to buy another from a Norman cellphone store, whose employees became alarmed by her erratic behavior and called 911.

What unfolded next was sadly familiar. The Norman cop who responded to the 911 call noted that Hanchett’s behavior appeared to be “consistent with a mental health disorder,” the complaint continued, yet he arrested her on a flimsy charge—misdemeanor obstruction—to get her out of the store and into the jail. There she was largely ignored by both guards and the jail’s contracted healthcare provider, Turn Key Health, whose staffers failed to complete a medical intake and ignored her elevated vital signs. She was then locked in a “processing cell,” which the complaint described as a “tiny, cockroach-infested cell that had no sink, no toilet and no bed.”

Over the next 11 days, as Hanchett decompensated from her psychosis, the cell floor littered with her bodily waste and uneaten meals. Multiple guards passed by with water but offered none to Hanchett. For “up to 5 days at a time, no one at the Jail even opened the door,” the complaint continued. She was never personally seen again by Turn Key staff or any other medical provider, despite a state law—OAC 310:670-5-8(7)—which mandated a medical examination after 48 hours in custody. However, two Turn Key employees dutifully noted in Hanchett’s chart that she wasn’t eating.

For the last four days of her life, Hanchett was too weak to sit up. A Turn Key nurse noted that the detainee was lying nude in the floor “without inhibition,” yet she somehow concluded that Hanchett “presented to be a threat to herself and others.” Company nurse Tara Doto recorded that Hanchett refused to have her vital signs taken and wouldn’t let Doto conduct a “clinical interview” or “provide counseling and education”—all of which was a lie, as surveillance video clearly showed. Video also captured the “telemedicine” visit that Hanchett received from Dr. Jawuan Lewis, an offsite Turn Key psychiatrist, while a nurse held a telephone to the head of the semi-conscious detainee as she lay nude on the cell floor. Even after that ridiculous charade, Lewis failed to order further treatment.

Hanchett wasn’t transported to the jail medical unit for another four days, by which point she was dying. Yet surveillance video captured Doto and other Turn Key staffers joking with guards as they stepped over her lifeless body. A medical examiner determined the cause of death was heart failure, blaming it on Hanchett’s “prolonged catatonia and severe dehydration.”

The federal civil rights complaint filed on behalf of her Estate in 2024 by her widower, Daniel Hatchett, named as Defendants the guards’ employer, the Office of the County’s then-Sheriff Chris Amason, along with Turn Key Health and several of its employees, asking the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to find them liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 of deliberate indifference to Hatchett’s serious medical need, in violation of her Fourteenth Amendment rights. The complaint also lodged additional state-law claims for negligence.

The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. Under its terms, the County agreed to pay $18 million, with another $2 million promised by its insurer. The total included costs and fees for the Estate’s attorneys, Daniel E. Smolen, Robert M. Blakemore and Bryon D. Helm of Smolen and Roytman in Tulsa. See: Hanchett v. Sheriff of Cleveland Cty., USDC (W.D. Okla.), Case No. 5:24-cv-00087.

The County will tap “sinking fund tax levies” averaging over $55 per property owner per year to pay its share of the tab in three consecutive annual installments of $6 million each, according to KOKH in Oklahoma City. The deal was approved by a 2-1 vote, with County Commissioner Rod Cleveland saying he preferred to “test[] liability or damages” at trial, according to companion reporting by The Frontier. That same report also said that Turn Key left the jail in 2025 when it didn’t renew its contract. Smolen added that the payout would provide “some financial security” for two sons that Hanchett left behind, both now teenagers.

Wagoner County Jail Death Settlement Prompts
Sales Tax Hike

The payout settling claims filed by Liggans’ Estate was smaller, but so is the population of Wagoner County, whose residents and visitors now pay a half-cent extra in sales tax to fund the $13.5 million settlement reached over her 2021 death in the County lockup. At the time the judgment was entered in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma on November 19, 2024, it was the largest jail death settlement in state history, according to a statement given by Smolen—who also represented Plaintiff in this case—to KOTV in Tulsa.

Liggans, 41, was booked into the Wagoner County Jail in May 2021 on several charges, including assault and battery on a police officer, domestic assault and obstruction. Her Type 1 diabetes required daily insulin doses, which she attempted to self-administer once she got to the jail. But deputies of Sheriff Chris Elliott who were guarding the jail took it from and tackled her to the floor, handcuffing her and tossing her in a cell, according to the complaint later filed on her behalf. They continued to interrupt her insulin doses, allowing none over the last two days of her life—even as she developed diabetic ketoacidosis.

With Smolen’s help, her Estate, represented by her mother, Sharon Dalton, filed suit under § 1983, accusing Elliott and his jail staff of violating Liggans’ Fourteenth Amendment rights with their deliberate indifference to her serious medical need—despite a “Fit for Incarceration” form on which a staffer dutifully noted at her intake “a number of medical conditions that needed immediate attention, including COPD, diabetes, ‘unknown heart problem’ and ‘scoliosis,’” the complaint recalled.

Once her insulin was wrestled away, Liggans got none that day nor the next, when a screening by a “medical assistant,” Haley Longshore, recorded Liggans’ reported “night sweats,” “persistent cough,” “loss of appetite,” “chest pains”, “coughing up blood,” “abnormal weight loss,” and suicidal feelings, the complaint continued. Her blood sugar levels spiked far above the normal range of 90-100, hitting 586. On May 28—11 days after booking—she finally got a dose of insulin, after her pulse was clocked at 124 and she passed out. But she still “was not seen by a physician nor by a nurse and was not sent to the hospital.”

The following day, Liggans descended into “an acute state of psychosis,” the complaint said, as she suffered “panic attacks” and had “hallucinations.” Reached by phone the next day, Dr. Ashley Aldrich told a nurse to give the detainee “five units of ‘Novolog’ insulin” because her blood sugar level remained dangerously high at 324. But the day after that she was again denied any medication. By June 1 she was displaying “bizarre and psychotic behavior.” Though her illness left her “so weak [that] she could not get out of bed,” she got no insulin that day, either.

On June 2, the last day of her life, Liggans’ “strange demeanor” was observed by guard Cpl. Blake Bode, who recorded that she was “unsteady on her feet” and fell repeatedly in her cell. But no aid came before two other guards found her unresponsive and “completely discolored” that afternoon. One attempted to employ the jail’s automated external defibrillator, but it was “inoperable.” Emergency responders were summoned and pronounced Liggans dead.

“[Liggans] falls multiple times, hitting her head,” Smolen said. “She’s sweating profusely. She is hallucinating. She is unaware of her surroundings. This goes on, not for hours, but for days. It’s all documented by jail staff, and much of it is on surveillance video.”

After Smolen filed the Estate’s suit in April 2023, the parties proceeded to reach their settlement agreement in August 2024, with a payout that included costs and fees for its attorneys. The judgment entered by the district court three months later noted that the County’s insurer paid $483,156.70, and the County promised to pay the remaining $13,016,843.30 in 10 equal annual installments beginning May 1, 2026, along with interest calculated at a 4.89% annual rate for the first three installments and 6% for the remaining payments. See: Dalton v. Elliott, USDC (E.D. Okla.), Case No. 6:23-cv-00139.

The County’s most recently recorded population was 80,981, in 2020—meaning each of them owes about $16 a year for the next decade just to cover this settlement. That’s why County commissioners put their plan to raise the sales tax on the February 2025 ballot, and it was approved by an overwhelming 92.9% of voters, KOKH reported. Asked at a public meeting that month what he was doing to prevent another bill like this, Sheriff Elliott said that the jail had hired over a dozen new healthcare providers.

Smolen also secured the state’s current record-largest jail death payout, a $33 million verdict against Ottawa County for the 2015 death of Terral Ellis, Jr., 26, in the County lockup. Though he died begging for medical attention while a nurse and guards mocked him, the County appealed the verdict, which was sustained by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in February 2024, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2024, p.22.] County residents voted in August 2026 to approve a 1-cent sales tax increase to cover the debt.

That’s a total of $66.5 million in just three settlements of jail death cases, for which Smolen and his fellow attorneys deserve enormous credit. Detainees in the jails in Ottawa and Wagoner Counties will also now have their healthcare provided by in-house medical personnel. The Cleveland County Jail has contracted detainee healthcare from Redemption Correctional Healthcare Services PLLC.  

Additional sources: The Frontier, KOKH, KOTV

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