Mother sues Missouri prison system, says officials keeping info about son’s death secret

A woman whose incarcerated son died is suing the Missouri Department of Corrections, alleging the state agency is withholding information she has a right to access under open records laws.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Cole County Circuit Court.

LeVaughn D. James, 45, was convicted of stealing in 2018 and sentenced to four years in a St. Charles County case.

On May 22, he was discovered unresponsive at Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green.

Two days later, his mother Mary James contacted a corrections caseworker and was told he had been transferred to “medics,” but given no other information, according to the lawsuit.

On May 26, a corrections official told her that he had gotten “ahold of some K2,” the lawsuit said. The drug is a synthetic cannabinoid.

Mary James was also informed that her son was at a St. Louis hospital. She drove there the next day and a cardiologist told her he had been on a ventilator for several days.

He died June 1.

Mary James filed four open records requests seeking information about the department’s policies and her son’s death, including video footage from around the time he was found unresponsive, his medical records, and autopsy and toxicology reports.

The lawsuit claims that the department of corrections violated open records law in three of the four requests. It also argues she should get records because she is a “first-degree family member,” as defined by state statute.

“This lawsuit is about transparency, and a mother’s right to know what happened to her son,” said Brandon Jackson, staff attorney at ArchCity Defenders, which filed the suit along with the ACLU of Missouri. “The Missouri Sunshine Law exists to keep the public informed about governmental affairs.”

According to the lawsuit, more than 1,900 prisoners have overdosed while in Missouri Department of Corrections custody since May 2017. The department’s “investigations of these matters are compromised,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit seeks an order to provide the requested documents, a $5,000 civil penalty for each of the three alleged records violations and attorney fees.

The Missouri Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment.

As of Oct. 17, 107 prisoners have died in Missouri prisons, a 25% increase compared to the same time last year. It’s also more than the total number of annual deaths in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

In 2020, amid major COVID outbreaks, a total of 129 people died. This year is on pace to exceed 2020’s rate.