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SALT LAKE CITY — A federal jury on Tuesday found Daggett County liable for violating the constitutional rights of three out of four men who were abused by employees while the men were incarcerated at the Daggett County Jail.
Jurors deliberated over three days and awarded the three men $352,300 in damages.
Four former inmates — Steven Drollette, Joshua Olsen, Dustin Porter and Joshua Asay — filed a civil lawsuit claiming they experienced cruel or unusual punishment at the jail, prior to it being shut down in 2017.
The seven-man, three-woman jury deliberated Friday, Monday and Tuesday morning before sending a notice to U.S. District Judge David Barlow saying it was in a deadlock, according to defense attorney Frank Mylar.
Barlow gave a modified Allen charge, according to the court docket, which is an instruction used to prevent a hung jury by encouraging those in the minority to reconsider. The group later came to a consensus, finding the county liable for the constitutional violations of three of the men.
"We feel good about it," Mylar told KSL.com, "I think it should have been a little lower, but that was for the jury to decide."
Mylar said the ACLU initially sought a $3.2-million settlement from the county, which was rejected in favor of sending the case to trial. In the end, Drollette was awarded $65,000, Olsen will get $58,500, leaving $228,800 for Asay. No damages were awarded to Porter. The damages are expected to be paid from the Utah Counties Indemnity Pool, an insurance fund for municipalities in the state.
Attorneys representing the former inmates had to convince the jury that Daggett County's deliberate indifference, through former Daggett County Sheriff Jerry Jorgensen, directly led to cruel and unusual punishment at the hands of former sheriff's deputy Joshua Cox.
In 2017, Cox was sentenced to 120 days in jail for deploying Tasers on inmates as part of an "initiation" onto a coveted outdoor work crew. All state inmates were eventually removed from the county jail following a state investigation into broader misconduct by jail employees, reducing the county's revenues by an estimated $1.4 million, annually.
Much of the abuse detailed by prosecutors had already been established from previous criminal cases. This civil case was meant to determine the county's responsibility.
In closing arguments Friday, ACLU legal director John Mejía argued "an environment of impunity" was encouraged by Jorgensen's lack of oversight, even though he must have known about serious abuses that were taking place at the jail in the years before the closure.
Their most powerful piece of evidence seemed to be a guilty plea that Jorgensen signed in 2017, admitting to official misconduct, a class B misdemeanor, that was held in abeyance and dismissed after six months.
Mejía said Jorgensen "knowingly put a weak link in this chain" by placing an unqualified commander at the helm of the jail. He argued that Jorgensen's lack of discipline, when he knew there were officers sleeping on shift, mishandling equipment and being inappropriately physical with each other directly encouraged Cox's stunning of inmates with Tasers, and allegedly commanding his golden retriever and a different police dog in training to bite the inmates.
Prosecutors initially recommended the jury award $758,400 to Drollette, $463,000 to Olsen, $883,400 to Porter and $1,815,000 to Asay, for economic damages and the impact these abuses might have over the lifetimes of the four men, for a total of over $3.9 million.
In the defense's closing statements, Mylar said, "what the sheriff did or did not know is crucial" to the case, painting a picture of an insular faction of "bad apples" that kept quiet about the abuse so the commander and Jorgensen would not find out about it. "When the sheriff knew of a problem, he put a stop to it," Mylar said, adding that Cox was solely responsible for the mistreatment.
"He crossed a big line, crossed a canyon," Mylar said. "Do not lay this harm that Cox did on the county." He said Daggett County — Utah's smallest county by population — lost its largest source of revenue when the jail was closed, and many good employees lost their jobs.
Mylar questioned the timing of some allegations, he said, did not surface until the lawsuit was filed, despite numerous opportunities to report them. "I think there's honestly some lying going on" to bolster damages, he said, saying the plaintiffs may be "exaggerating to win the lottery."
Olsen's attorney, Alyson McAllister, told the jury the defense wanted the jury to ignore the evidence, which she said shows the abuse in the jail was "common knowledge."
The standard of intent to find that the county was deliberately indifferent is lower than for an individual, and takes into account what officials should have known, not necessarily what they did know, Mylar later told KSL.com.
The case, which was filed almost six years ago, concludes the litigation against the Daggett County Jail. The 11-acre site has sat empty and unsold outside Manila since 2018. It is listed at $3.95 million, down $500,000 from its original sale price.
