Wrongful Death Compensation for Family of Murdered Prisoner
A jury in the Comanche County Court, Oklahoma, have found in favour of a family claiming wrongful death compensation against the Oklahoma Penal System after a family member was murdered in a brutal cell attack.
The family of Ronald Sites (48) – who died when his cellmate, Robert Cooper, strangled him in January 2005 – claimed that the Geo Group Inc and The Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, operators of the Lawton Correctional Facility had a duty of care towards Ronald to maintain him in a safe and secure manner.
Sites had been a former law enforcement officer who had an existing brain injury condition which left him unable to control his constant talking. Prison officers failed to educate the inmates about Sites’ medical condition and, as a result, Sites was the subject of extreme harassment to which the prison staff and officials turned a blind eye.
Under standard protocol, prison staff at the Lawton Correctional Facility were under a duty to keep Sites in protective custody and in an individual cell. However, prison officials ignored the restriction and placed him in a shared cell with Cooper.
Cooper was a convicted murderer who had already stabbed another inmate and did time in isolation because he admitted to a counsellor that he fought off the urge to kill a prior cellmate. Standard protocol dictated that Cooper also be given a single cell to protect other inmates from his aberrant behaviour.
Cooper strangled Sites on January 29, 2005 and prison staff were unaware that Sites was dead until the following morning.
In their action against the Geo Group Inc and The Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, the family alleged that the private corporations had been negligent and recklessly disregarded Sites´ civil rights. They further claimed that the duty of care they provided for Sites fell below that of industry standards.
After a ten day hearing, the civil jury at the Comanche County Court took three hours to find in favour of the Sites family, and awarded them $6 million in actual damages and $500,000 in punitive damages against the defendants.