Settlement considered in jail deaths

Maricopa County is poised to offer $1.3 million to settle lawsuits brought by families of two inmates who died in jail.

Attorney Michael Manning, who represents both plaintiffs, said he has been in settlement negotiations with the county, but they haven’t reached even a tentative agreement.

Manning declined to comment on whether the offers of $1 million plus reasonable attorney’s fees for the family of Phillip Wilson and $300,000 for the family of Deborah Ann Braillard are acceptable.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on whether to approve the offers at its meeting Wednesday.

Wilson’s mother, Pearl Wilson, alleges in a 2004 lawsuit that detention officers in Tent City failed to protect Wilson and that jail conditions and policies led to his death.

Wilson, 39, was a nonviolent offender serving his sentence in Tent City on July 22, 2003, when a group of inmates beat him unconscious.

“These inmates used weapons to beat Phillip so brutally that his blood was sprayed across the tent,” the lawsuit states.

He lapsed into a coma and died Nov. 18, 2003.

“I’m not going to comment on this thing until it goes through the system,” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.

Braillard’s family claims she was denied treatment for her diabetes while incarcerated in January 2005.

The family claims in court documents that Braillard, 46, was known to jailers as a diabetic because of a previous jail stint, but she was denied insulin for more than two days.

Wilson’s case wasn’t the first involving the beating death of an inmate in Tent City.

A jury awarded Jeremy Flanders $797,887 in February 2000, according to court records.

Flanders, who was serving a yearlong sentence for burglary, sued the county Oct. 29, 1997, after he was hit by a tent stake from his upper bunk, according to court records.

Flanders argued that his safety was jeopardized by chronic understaffing and the inherent risks of detaining a range of offenders from drunken drivers to killers together in open tent facilities.