Family sues Mecklenburg jail over UVA honor graduate’s suicide after withholding drugs

In the weeks before he was found hanging in his Mecklenburg County jail cell, Devin Haley pleaded repeatedly for prescribed medication that had successfully treated his suicidal tendencies, his family’s new federal lawsuit claims.

Sixteen times the increasingly desperate 41-year-old inmate asked for the anti-depressant, Wellbutrin, which Haley had taken daily under a doctor’s supervision before his jailing on April 3, 2021.

Sixteen times, the jail’s medical or detention staff either said no to his requests or prescribed other medication that Haley took sparingly or refused to take at all, the lawsuit claims.

“Having a seriously rough time with the new meds and would like to talk to the doctor about putting me back on my Wellbutrin,” Haley said in an April 27, 2021, message sent through a jail kiosk, which was included in the lawsuit.

Two days later, it was more of the same. “Wellbutrin,” he wrote, “definitely need it, please give it.”

The jail never did.

On May 22, 2021, Haley, a former University of Virginia honors graduate, was found hanging in his cell, a blanket attached to a window frame painstakingly tied in a series of knots around his neck.

In their lawsuit, Haley’s parents and siblings blame Haley’s “slow, preventable and totally unnecessary death” on his mistreatment at the jail — from the drugs he never received and the mental health sessions he was promised but never took place to the required twice-an-hour visits to Haley’s cell that jailers did not make.

“Defendants had more than sufficient knowledge of Devin’s deteriorating mental health and had immediate access to the mental health care required, yet they acted with deliberate indifference to and blatant disregard for Devin’s safety,” the lawsuit claims.

The complaint names almost 20 defendants, from Mecklenburg County and Sheriff Garry McFadden and many of his top jail assistants, to Wellpath, LLC, the jail’s medical provider, the jail’s chief medical officer, Dr. Daniel Biondi, and several members of his staff.

The 63-page complaint filed by Charlotte attorneys Amanda Mingo and Katie Clary alleges multiple claims, including violations of constitutional rights, wrongful death and injury to a prisoner by a jailer.

Bradley Smith, a spokesman for McFadden and the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, said Tuesday that the office does not comment on a pending court matter.

The jail, North Carolina’s largest local detention facility, has been the site of at least nine inmate deaths since May 2021. The most recent occurred in January.

The Haleys’ complaint is at least the second involving an inmate who took his own life while under the supervision of McFadden and his staff.

An April lawsuit filed by the mother of a juvenile who hanged himself in his cell in November 2020 makes many of the same accusations as the Haleys — that Mecklenburg jailers failed to act on increasing signs of the youth’s desperation, skipped required trips to the youth’s cell in the hour leading up to his death, then manipulated records to make it appear they had made more visits to the teen’s cell than they had.

Both deaths occurred when the jail was experiencing unprecedented personnel shortages brought on by the pandemic. The resulting lawsuits raise critical questions about how local detention facilities in general handle mentally ill inmates.

From 2000 to 2019, the annual number of jail suicides rose 13%. A total of 6,200 jail inmates took their lives during the period. Three-quarters of the dead were awaiting trial and presumed innocent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a federal agency.

A covered window

In many ways, Haley was a highly atypical jail inmate. He graduated with distinction at UVA and was one of the few students in his class chosen for the prestigious honor of living on The Lawn, according to his obituary. He later worked for Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

Haley also battled emotional problems for most of his life. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was severely depressed, according to his lawsuit. He had also tried to kill himself several times and had several stays in psychiatric hospitals.

On April 3, 2021, he was arrested on a federal parole violation and booked into the uptown jail. He underwent a mental health screening in which he shared his medical history and the behavioral drugs he had been taking under his doctor’s supervision.

Based on the interview, he was placed on the stricter supervision of so-called “suicide watch,” but was removed after one day — a violation of jail policy because a physician had not been involved in the decision, the lawsuit claims.

Over the next seven weeks, as his pleas for his medicines went unanswered, Haley’s condition visibly deteriorated. At one point, he went almost a month without any medication at all. His last psychiatric exam took place on April 20. The lawsuit does not say why the jail did not give Haley the medication he sought.

During a May 2, 2021, meeting with a Wellpath social worker, Haley displayed a visible injury to his eye where he had punched himself. Two weeks later, a jailer noted that Haley had begun using contraband to make it difficult for officers to unlock his cell.

On the morning of his death, Haley had covered the window of his cell, and jailer Savior Jones could not immediately open the door, according to the complaint. He peered through a trap slot and saw Haley hanging from his blanket.

Later, and as The Charlotte Observer previously reported, a state inspection would find that Jones and other jailers made a dozen fewer trips to observe Haley on May 21-22 than what regulations required.