Civil rights lawsuit filed against Nevada Department of Corrections

The estate of an inmate who died at High Desert State Prison in 2023 has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Nevada Department of Corrections.

Filed in District Court on Aug. 19, the estate of Lathaniel Hutcherson — which includes Hutcherson’s mother, Trina Gill, and his young son — alleges that prison guards and the state’s department of corrections failed to protect Hutcherson “from a known risk of serious harm.”

Hutcherson, 28, had served five years of a six- to-20-year sentence for robbery when he was stabbed to death on Aug. 20, 2023, while inside a separation cage — typically used to protect vulnerable inmates — at the prison.

According to a complaint filed by Jonathan Lee, an attorney with the Richard Harris Law Firm, Hutcherson’s death was part of a “pattern of deliberate indifference” by the department’s leadership.

The wrongful death lawsuit alleges that Hutcherson was killed while inside the cage for his “exercise hour” time. The complaint alleges that Hutcherson was “violently stabbed by an inmate who escaped his cage,” which “revealed (the department’s) deliberate indifference to inmate safety.”

As of Sunday, the department had not responded to a request from the Las Vegas Review-Journal for comment on the lawsuit.

Killings at High Desert

The lawsuit was filed amid a summer of violence at High Desert, a maximum security facility in Indian Springs about 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas. From July 16 through Aug. 17, five inmates under the age of 40 died at High Desert, with three of those deaths being investigated as suspected homicides, according to an Aug. 12 press release from the department.

As well, the recent death of an inmate at Southern Desert Correctional Center, which neighbors High Desert, was also being investigated as a suspected homicide, the department said in the release.

Department officials “suspect drug debt is an exacerbating factor” in the homicides, and that the “deaths were in different housing units and appear unrelated,” the news release said, adding that surveillance and staff operations were also increased to “reduce the number of offenders outside their cells at one time.”

Department spokesman Bill Quenga said officials believe much of the recent violence at High Desert has ultimately been caused by drug use among inmates, the Las Vegas Review-Journal previously reported.

In an Aug. 22 email, Quenga said drugs can be hard to detect in the prison environment, especially when smugglers “spray or brush paper with synthetic drugs and then mail them into the facilities.”

“The drugs are then sold throughout the population,” Quenga said. “If the recipient does not deliver on payment, it places the offender’s life in danger.”

Quenga said the department was working with multiple companies to help put better drug detection systems in place. The department is also using artificial intelligence to help track what comes into the prisons in Nevada, he said.

He also said a new “contraband task force” was also recently created as officials attempt to limit the flow of “weapons, narcotics, gang paraphernalia, and other forms of contraband.”

Cell doors

The Hutcherson lawsuit references a lack of “separation cage integrity,” which is why, the lawsuit alleges, another inmate was able to breach Hutcherson’s cage. The lawsuit also alleges “broken locks and defective latches” on doors and other “structural weaknesses.”

The effectiveness of cell doors at High Desert is also an issue that has been raised by relatives of another inmate killed at the prison. Family members of D’marea Wallace — an 18-year-old High Desert inmate who died from “multiple stab wounds” on Aug. 6 at High Desert, according to the Clark County coroner’s office — recently told the Review-Journal they are convinced that the door to Wallace’s cell was “popped” open to allow for several inmates to raid his living area.

Quenga said that “a design flaw” exists with some of High Desert’s cell doors.

“A capital improvement project has already been approved to quickly resolve the issue this fiscal biennium,” Quenga said in his email. “Officers have now been trained in how to circumvent this issue.”

Safety is ‘top priority’

Quenga said recent funding approvals at the state level will also “boost security” and that a “replacement of recreational enclosures” will “increase safety.”

“The safety of offenders and staff remains the top priority of the Nevada Department of Corrections and High Desert State Prison,” Quenga said. “Currently (at High Desert), the number of offenders allowed out for recreation at one time has been significantly reduced while still adhering to federal and local laws regarding out-of-cell time.”

Along with the state and the Nevada Department of Corrections, James Dzurenda, the department’s director, is named in the Hutcherson lawsuit, as are other High Desert officials including warden Jeremy Bean.

Efforts to reach Lee for comment were unsuccessful.

Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.