DENVER—A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower-court ruling in an Oklahoma case in favor of Cleveland County officials who were sued by the daughter of a man who died while he was being held in the county jail.
Kenneth Wayne Ginn was arrested on May 2, 2006, for public intoxication and booked into the jail in Norman at 6:24 p.m. The 49-year-old Noble man was found dead in his cell a little more than three hours later.
An autopsy showed that Ginn had a blood-alcohol content of 0.32 percent and the state Medical Examiner’s office ruled he had died of a heart attack and that alcohol may have been a contributing factor.
In February 2007, Ginn’s daughter, Ginger Martinez, sued then-Cleveland County Sheriff DeWayne Beggs, sheriff’s deputies Kevin Brandon, Tommy Edwards, David Epps and Gilbert Kirkland and the county’s three-member board of commissioners, claiming they had been deliberately indifferent to Ginn’s medical needs while he was in custody, in violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Friot granted summary judgment to the defendants in the case in January, and a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling Tuesday.
In the appeals court opinion, Circuit Judge Mary Beck Briscoe wrote that there was no evidence in the district court record of any signs indicating that Ginn might suffer a heart attack.
“Whereas the practice of admitting to the understaffed jail unconscious individuals suspected of intoxication shows a deliberate indifference to an obvious and substantial risk of serious harm, Ginn was not unconscious and showed no obvious symptoms indicating a risk of serious harm,” Briscoe wrote.
“Nothing in the record indicates that Ginn exhibited symptoms that would predict his imminent heart attack or death.”
