Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters faces a new federal lawsuit filed this week by the family of a man who died after a short stint in Duval County’s jail. The lawsuit accuses the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office of violating 54-year-old Dexter Barry’s constitutional rights after denying him medication for a heart transplant.

The Sheriff’s Office did not return The Tributary’s request for comment Thursday.

Officer Jacob McKeon arrested Barry after his neighbor called 911 over an argument they had. A fight never occurred, but Barry was arrested on a simple assault charge after the neighbor said Barry threatened to beat him up if he didn’t pay his share of their WiFi bill. 

During his arrest, Barry told McKeon at least seven times that he needed to take his anti-rejection medications every day to survive, according to body camera footage reviewed by The Tributary. The next morning, according to the court transcript, Barry told Judge Gilbert Feltel the same.

“I am on medication,” Barry told the judge. “I just had a heart transplant, and I haven’t taken my medicine all day since I have been locked up, and I take rejection medicines for my heart so my heart won’t reject it, and I’m almost two years out.”

Jail records show that Barry never got his medication. According to Armor Correctional Health Services, which ran the jail’s medical care at the time, it would take a minimum of 48 hours to get the medicine. By then, Barry had gone two days without his medication and bonded out of the jail.

He died on Nov. 23, 2022, after collapsing in his living room. An autopsy ordered by his family concluded that he died of a cardiac arrest due to his body rejecting the organ. 

Dr. Maya Guglin, an Indiana cardiologist on the board at the American College of Cardiology, previously told The Tributary that organ transplant recipients have to take anti-rejection medications because their bodies view the new organ as an invasion that must be fought off. 

“If you just drop those medications, everyone is eventually going to reject that organ,” she said. 

Restarting medication later won’t reverse the damage of missing those earlier doses, Guglin said.

The lawsuit, filed by Jacksonville civil rights attorney Andrew Bonderud, said Barry took his medicine diligently every day before his arrest, and, during a check-up seven months earlier, a doctor determined his heart “was in excellent condition” and that his body was responding well to the transplant with medications. 

“We look forward to holding the City of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office accountable for Dexter Barry’s death,” Bonderud told The Tributary on Thursday afternoon. The city owes a debt to Barry’s family after his death, he said.

The lawsuit names the sheriff as the sole defendant, and it said Waters had a duty to provide care to the inmates in his custody and that he failed.

Armor filed to sell the company’s assets and debts in October. In that filing, it said it had more than $150 million in debt. The Barry family’s lawsuit said the company had bragged about its cost-saving measures even as it provided inadequate medical care.

During Armor’s contract, the lawsuit says the company’s staffing levels were so low that the then-corrections director asked for volunteers from the Jacksonville Fire & Rescue Department to help. The request, Bonderud wrote, did not lead to additional resources to address staffing shortages. 

“Sheriff T.K. Waters, individually, and high-level elected officials at the City of Jacksonville were well aware of Armor’s long history of causing injury and loss of inmate lives,” Bonderud wrote in the lawsuit, and despite that, the contract was renewed in late 2022. 

A month prior to the contract renewal, Armor was convicted of a felony over the death of a Wisconsin inmate. That conviction should have made Armor ineligible for the contract.

Then, a July analysis by The Tributary found that deaths tripled after 2017, when the first contract with Armor was signed. Waters ended the $98 million contract in September and signed a more expensive contract with another for-profit medical provider, NaphCare. 

The lawsuit accuses Armor of never planning to provide inmates with all their necessary prescription medications, which officials should have known before the contract renewed, Bonderud wrote. 

At a meeting last month regarding inmate care at UF Health, NaphCare representative T.J. Meneely said the company had to grow the pharmacy by 20% and buy additional medical carts to catch up from where Armor left off. 

Sheriff asks for authorization in settlements

If the Jacksonville City Council approves a new piece of legislation Waters requested, he would be given the power to have a say in how the city handles the lawsuit and any that could come after.

On Jan. 10, the City Council introduced legislation that would require written authorization by constitutional officers for the city to settle any claim involving their office.

The council members who co-sponsored the legislation are Nick Howland, Chris Miller, Raul Arias, Joe Carlucci, Ken Amaro, Will Lahnen, Terrance Freeman.

Waters requested the legislation after he publicly denounced a $200,000 settlement, first reported by The Tributary, in the police killing of Jamee Johnson, a 22-year-old Florida A&M University student who was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt in 2019.

Despite the payment, the city did not admit the officer did anything wrong. Instead, the city said it settled because of the “uncertainty” of a trial –  a move that “deeply disappointed” Waters.

When The Tributary publicized the settlement in November after the case was dismissed, Waters told reporters that the city entered into a settlement agreement without his knowledge or consent. If he had been consulted, Waters said he would have requested the case go to trial.