A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Adams County for the 2017 murder of an inmate in the county jail, allowing a jury to now decide whether the actions of a jail employee and the jail’s policies contributed to the slaying.

“This is a case where immeasurable tragedy meets us at every turn,” wrote U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson in an order issued on Nov. 18.

On Feb. 7, 2017, Che Bachicha murdered his cellmate, Kyle Yoemans, in the Adams County Detention Facility. At the time, both men were awaiting trial for attempted murder. Yoemans’s mother and estate filed a lawsuit claiming jail employee Christopher Campbell improperly cleared Bachicha to have a cellmate, despite him being a maximum-security, potentially violent detainee. 

The Adams County Board of County Commissioners approved funding for a separate mental health unit at the jail in 2015, after an increase in detainees with mental health conditions or disorders. The facility, however, did not open until the end of 2017. Campbell, who worked in the classifications unit, classified 20 to 50 individuals daily, assigning them to a level of custody based on observations within the intake unit and the inmates’ history and risk factors. Mental and medical health records were not part of the classification files.

“In fact, [Campbell] did not assess inmates’ behavior or demeanor during interviews nor was he trained to assess such behavior,” Jackson wrote in his narrative of the process.

Campbell assigned Bachicha the maximum score based on his prior convictions, his three previous escapes and his history of discipline while incarcerated. However, Campbell also indicated Bachicha was potentially violent (although he also explained he issued this designation for nearly all inmates).

Yoemans received the same classification, but without a notation of potential violence. Yoemans arrived at the jail after a three-month hospital stay, and his classification interview took place with Yoemans lying in a hospital bed.

“Mr. Bachicha’s mother begged officers to have the jail place Mr. Bachicha in the mental health ward and separated from others,” the plaintiffs wrote in their federal complaint. “The hands of Mr. Bachicha may have killed him, but Mr. Yoemans’ death is the fault of the individual and systemic failures of these Defendants.”

Just after midnight on Feb. 7, a deputy performed two checks of the cell area a half hour apart. On the second walk-through, the deputy saw Yoemans lying facedown on the floor with blood around his head. Two inmates reported hearing banging noises lasting between 10 and 30 minutes, but others, including the deputies on duty, heard nothing.

Bachicha subsequently received a conviction for second-degree murder and a 72-year prison sentence.

Jackson declined to grant qualified immunity to Campbell, which is a judicial doctrine intended to shield government employees from liability lawsuits absent a violation of clear constitutional or statutory rights. The plaintiffs alleged Campbell had violated Yoemans’s Eighth Amendment right against unjustifiable conditions of confinement.

Jackson acknowledged both men faced charges for the same crime, but in contrast to Yoemans, who had been arrested six months earlier and had a traumatic brain injury, Bachicha was arrested only two weeks prior to the murder. Further, Campbell knew of Bachicha’s criminal and disciplinary history and was aware of Bachicha’s violent potential, even if he did not think it likely Bachicha would actually assault someone.

“Therefore, while defendant Campbell did not know that Mr. Bachicha would be housed with Mr. Yoemans specifically, a reasonable jury could infer that Campbell knew whomever was housed with Mr. Bachicha was at risk of being seriously harmed,” Jackson wrote.

Those claims, the county had maintained, “do little more than describe jail conditions that, at certain times, may exist at a jail housing violent offenders….Some amount of physical assault will inevitably occur in a population of such inmates.”

Yoemans’s mother and estate also sued then-Sheriff Michael McIntosh, claiming he had responsibility for the policies that led to Yoemans’s death. McIntosh acknowledged he was responsible for the safety and security within the jail, and even though the plaintiffs did not cite a policy the former sheriff created personally that led to the death, Jackson decided such proof was unnecessary to hold McIntosh liable based on the allegations.

“Sheriff McIntosh also knew of staffing and surveillance inadequacies within the jail that could result in unsafe conditions,” the judge pointed out, referring to a consultant’s finding that 77% of jail employees believed the jail had insufficient staff to ensure inmate safety.

“Second, defendant McIntosh was aware that the maximum-security pod was not under an increased level of supervision and in fact was less supervised than lower security areas of the facility,” Jackson continued. “McIntosh knew there were blind spots where neither deputies nor the detention specialist could see inmates.”

The sheriff also knew of the four deaths in the jail in 2015 and numerous inmate-on-inmate assaults, to which McIntosh had reacted, “it’s not my role and my responsibility” to prevent those.

Finally, Jackson denied immunity to Adams County, which had argued there was no pattern or practice of misclassifications that caused inmate deaths. The judge agreed the plaintiffs had plausibly questioned whether the classification policy at the jail was adequate given the absence of mental health records from the process and no accounting for inmates’ serious disabilities, like Yoemans’s. They had also illustrated an inadequate training and assessment protocol for classification specialists like Campbell.

Jackson believed a reasonable jury could find the county’s policies were behind Yoemans’s murder.

Asked whether Campbell was still employed at the jail or whether the county had changed its classification protocols in response to the murder, Adams County Attorney Heidi Miller said she would not comment on pending litigation.

The case is Estate of Kyle Christopher Yoemans et al. v. Campbell et al.