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Inmate's family sues corrections department
By The Southern
Published: 05/17/2004

A lawsuit filed in Cook County (Ill.) Circuit Court accuses staff at Menard Correctional Center of drinking hot beverages and wearing winter coats as an inmate under their watch slowly froze to death.
The brother and father of Charles Platcher, an inmate who died while in state custody on Dec. 25, filed the suit against the Illinois Department of Corrections and Health Professionals LTD, a company that provides some medical services for the prison. The suit asks for damages to be awarded in excess of $1 million. A coroner's inquest held in Randolph County in March ruled the death accidental and the cause hypothermia.
Platcher was under a strip-cell suicide watch in the prison's health care unit. According to the lawsuit, Platcher's cell contained no mattress, blankets or other covers and he was allowed only a hospital gown for warmth.
The suit also alleges that before he was placed in the cell, Platcher was beaten and had his hands cuffed behind his back. In retaliation for complaining about his treatment, the suit says, staff stuffed a sock in Platcher's mouth and pushed him down metal stairways that lead to the health care unit.
According to the lawsuit, Menard and/or HPL were to maintain a medical doctor on the premises around the clock, seven days a week. Despite that, the suit alleges, no doctor was on duty during the time of Platcher's incarceration in the cell, nor for events leading up to and causing his death.
According to Illinois Department of Corrections policy, those prisoners under the strip-cell watch are checked on every 10 minutes through a "chuck hole," which is also used to pass meals or medication to prisoners. No one actually entered Platcher's cell for 24 hours prior to his transport to Memorial Hospital in Chester on Christmas Day.
The suit alleges Menard staff and HPL were negligent in not properly staffing the health care unit and allowing Platcher to succomb to hypothermia, and that his death was directly attributable to that neglect as well as the abuse he suffered.
The lawsuit also asks for an injunction against both parties and asks that neither party be allowed to destroy records pertaining to Platcher's incarceration and death.
Sergio Molina, chief of communications for the corrections department, said he couldn't comment on the suit because the corrections department has not yet been served with the lawsuit.


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