JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Jacksonville family is suing the Florida Department of Corrections, accusing prison guards of killing a former inmate at Lake Butler Reception and Medical Center in Union County.
Timothy Thomas' family and their attorney Robert Slama ordered his body to be exhumed for an independent autopsy.
Thomas had been transferred to the facility in March 2018 for a surgery.
According to court documents, prison guards pulled him out of line at the cafeteria for wearing religious headgear. Slama said they beat, pepper sprayed and put Thomas in disciplinary confinement.
Thomas was documented as having asthma, according to the lawsuit. The prison had received paperwork that showed that there were risks if he was to be sprayed with chemical agents, due to his condition.
A cellmate observed Thomas choking and unable to breath throughout the night. Thomas was dead when they opened the cell the next morning.
"There's only one suspect left or suspects," Slama said. "It's the guards. When you take someone and you put them in DC disciplinary confinement, you control everything about them, so who else is there to look at? It's the guards."
The lawsuit says the first medical examiner "falsified" Thomas' cause of death initially, ruling it a homicide by stabbing.
However, his cellmate was cleared of wrongdoing, and his manner of death was changed then from homicide to undetermined.
Thomas' family believes he died of respiratory failure, brought on by repeated pepper spray, and lack of medical treatment.
"We are confident that what one will find is," Slama said, "with an investigation properly done, that the guards are complicit and administered the very trauma, which Dr. Hamilton previously noted, that led to his death."
State Attorney Brian Kramer declined to press charges against guards. Thomas’ attorney is asking Gov. Ron DeSantis to assign a new prosecutor to the case.