Nicholas Overfield’s death came after the El Dorado prison denied HIV medication, the lawsuit says

Lawyers said Nicholas Overfield first discovered he was HIV-positive when he was taken into custody at the El Dorado County Jail in Northern California in 2017. In 2020, while living in the Lake Tahoe area, a doctor prescribed him Juluca, an antiretroviral drug that is crucial in controlling the virus and preventing life-threatening complications, according to medical record excerpts reviewed by JS.

However, when Overfield was arrested in February 2022 for failing to appear in court and held in the same prison, he was denied the medication – even though staff at Wellpath, the company contracted to provide healthcare at the prison grant, receive information from his father. doctor that he used it, according to a pending lawsuit filed by his mother, Lesley Overfield, against the company and El Dorado County. He died after 63 days in custody, before he was ever convicted of the burglary charge, to which he ultimately pleaded no contest. He was 38 years old.

‘He was just a good boy. He just did everything, and it’s just really sad that he didn’t get to complete his life and do what he wanted to do,” Lesley Overfield told JS, describing her son as a “kind, loving, generous” father to two boys. , 8 and 10 years.

Under one 1976 Supreme Court decisionprisons cannot show “deliberate indifference” to the medical needs of people in their custody. Although Lesley Overfield said she was concerned when her son was arrested in 2022, she believed he would do well in the “controlled environment” of the prison. Instead, her lawsuit stated that Wellpath never treated her son for HIV, despite his doctor’s records received on the first day of his incarceration, his repeated pleas for his medication, and prison staff’s documentation in his patient files that his health was bad. deteriorating. As a result, he developed AIDS and related complications that killed him, the lawsuit said.

Wellpath declined to comment to JS and El Dorado County officials did not respond to a request for comment. They have not yet responded to the lawsuit’s amended complaint, which was filed in federal court on Aug. 21, but in an earlier lawsuit, El Dorado County said Lesley Overfield’s attorneys had not shown that the jail policy violated Nicholas Overfield’s rights violated. Wellpath sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, saying the claims against the company were without merit. The newly amended complaint now also names a doctor, nurses, a health care administrator and law enforcement officers who they allege are also responsible for Nicholas Overfield’s death. They also have not responded to the lawsuit’s claims and could not immediately be reached by JS.

Wellpath, the largest private provider of health care services in prisons and jails, has come under fire in recent years for its alleged treatment of incarcerated people in multiple U.S. states. In December 2023, Democratic Senators including Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Cory Booker (NJ) wrote a letter addressing the company’s alleged “inadequate care in federal, state and local prisons and jails.” In one detailed answerMarc Goldstone, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Wellpath, noted the difficulties of providing treatment in jail and prison facilities to patients whose health is often compromised. affected by adverse environments or social conditions, while at the same time defending the quality of care.

“Our company promotes high standards of care, invests in innovation and values ​​compassionate service,” Goldstone said at the time.

The company also responded to a question about whether incarcerated patients’ medications are ever changed or dispensed without the approval of the original prescriber.

“All medications are assessed for clinical appropriateness by licensed medical professionals,” Goldstone said.

The company has also faced other lawsuits, including one in the 2021 death of Maurice Monk in Santa Rita Jail, resulting in a $7 million settlement from Alameda County; the province has admitted no wrongdoing. His family’s civil suit against Wellpath is ongoing, and in court filings the company has said it is not responsible for his injuries and death. The Alameda County District Attorney also conducts research the case and has said there is evidence that Monk, who had mental health and medical problems, was dead for at least 72 hours before officers found his body in his cell.

According to Lesley Overfield’s lawsuit, an inmate housed in the same communal unit said in a statement that he observed prison staff ignore Nicholas Overfield’s request for his HIV medication multiple times and that Nicholas Overfield suffered from painful, open sores on his feet.

The inmate also said he heard a Wellpath employee say to Nicholas Overfield, “You don’t take care of yourself on the street, why should I take care of you here?” (An attorney for Lesley Overfield told JS that her son was living at her home at the time of his arrest.)

Several nurses who worked at Wellpath also had documented Nicholas Overfield’s deteriorating health in his medical records while he was in prison, but he was only given Tylenol, Imodium and Zofran, according to the lawsuit. He was able to meet with a doctor on March 10, weeks after he was detained.

The doctor ordered the lab work necessary to confirm his need for Juluca, but medical staff repeatedly rescheduled his lab appointment, the lawsuit said. His condition continued to deteriorate and he fell repeatedly in April, according to the lawsuit.

The unnamed detainee said in his statement that Nicholas Overfield’s skin had turned gray. The sores on his feet caused so much pain that he had difficulty walking and meals were brought to his cell, the inmate said.

An email between two El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies, dated April 21, 2022, and cited in the lawsuit, paints a grim picture of the condition of Nicholas Overfield’s cell, describing him as “extremely weak.”

“The cell was dirty and there was urine on the floor. I had [two officers] help Overfield out of bed,” the email said. “Overfield had a lot of trouble getting up and walking to the wheelchair.”

Attorney Ty Clarke, who represents Lesley Overfield, called her son’s situation “infuriating” in an interview with JS.

“This is not a case where someone suddenly became ill and died,” Clarke said. “This is a case where someone continually deteriorated for two months, in front of doctors, in front of nurses, in front of deputies, in front of sergeants, and they did nothing.”

Nicholas Overfield was visited by his mother on her birthday, April 23. She told JS that it had been two weeks since she last visited her son and that his condition had deteriorated dramatically since then.

Lesley Overfield said she saw jail staff taking her son in a wheelchair to the visiting area.

‘He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t talk. He was so weak he couldn’t hold himself up,” she said.

The mother returned to the jail the next day to express her concerns to a Wellpath nurse and demand that her son receive the medical care he needed, the lawsuit said. She then said she heard from a nurse that her son was in the infirmary.

“They didn’t take care of him like they should have,” she said. ‘They waited too long and didn’t give him his medicine. They didn’t see any concern for how he was feeling or what he was going through.”

According to the lawsuit, a nurse had called El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies for emergency assistance earlier that day after finding Nicholas Overfield on the floor of his cell in a pool of urine. The nurse reported in her notes that he “exhibited muscle weakness and was unable to use physical force to return to bed,” and that he had to go to the emergency room.

Despite the nurse’s report, Nicholas Overfield did not immediately go to the emergency room, according to the lawsuit. An El Dorado County sheriff’s sergeant claimed the office did not have a deputy available to escort him to the hospital, the complaint said.

Nicholas Overfield did not receive an emergency care up to 12 hours later, wWhen he was taken to Barton Memorial Hospital in an ambulance, the lawsuit said. Clarke wrote in the lawsuit’s complaint that it was too late at that point and he was flown to an intensive care unit in San Francisco.

“More than a month of intensive care could not save Nick,” Clarke wrote.

Nicholas Overfield died almost two months later in hospice. It was determined that his immediate cause of death was due to varicella-zoster virus encephalitis, an often fatal complication experienced by AIDS patients. Clarke said Nicholas Overfield contracted the condition around the time he was admitted to the ICU, but he argued that if Nicholas Overfield had received the Juluca he was originally prescribed in 2021, he would never have developed AIDS and ultimately died .

“HIV should not be a death sentence,” Clarke said. “You’ve made incredible, incredible medical advances,” but he claimed, “Wellpath and the sheriff’s office treated it like it was a death sentence.”

Instead of the illness that marked the last months of his life, Lesley Overfield remembers her son as an outgoing father who enjoyed spending time with his sons. She added that she misses his creativity — he wrote several poems for her — but most of all, she and her family miss having him part of their daily lives.

“I miss his smile,” she said, “and his ‘mom’ hugs.”