Anoka County inmate will get $1.9 million

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Howie Padilla and Bill McAuliffe, Star Tribune
January 12, 2005

Anoka County will pay $1.9 million to a work-release inmate who was found comatose in his dorm-style room after being neglected by workhouse officers for up to three days.

Curtis Chromulak, 39, was found lying in his own feces, urine and vomit on Sept. 6, 2002, three days after he was last seen moving around, according to a lawsuit filed in 2003 in federal court.

Anoka County officials said Tuesday that officers did a routine head-count, but admitted that they didn't thoroughly check on his well-being every half-hour as state law requires. No one was ever disciplined in the case.

Chromulak has severe memory loss, nerve damage throughout his body and can't fully use his left arm. He also has trouble balancing.

"It's like a part of my son died that day," said Chromulak's mother, Marilyn Pelz. "He's never going to be the same. He'll never be able to do so many of the things he used to love."

Chromulak was serving a 197-day sentence for an alcohol violation. He was being held in a building that had been a nurse's dormitory at the former Anoka State Hospital, said Jerry Soma, Anoka County's manager of human services.

Workhouse officers did head-counts six times a day but did not wake up the inmates, who worked at their regular jobs or on county work crews during the day, Soma said.

The wooden doors to the inmates' rooms had no windows, so officers had to go into the rooms to see the inmates.

State rules for correctional facilities require that wellness checks be done every half-hour, and "we know we didn't catch the fact that he wasn't waking up," Soma said.

On Sept. 6, officers had to wake up inmates for work because of a power failure. When they went to the room Chromulak shared with another inmate, they made a grisly discovery.

"His body had actually begun to decompose," said his attorney, Robert Bennett.

Chromulak was on his back with his eyes open. No one could rouse him, and when guards shook him, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, Bennett said.

It later was discovered that Chromulak was missing about $1,500 cash, money he had received from his last paycheck. It was also found that he had ingested methadone, a narcotic used to treat addiction that also can be abused.

According to the officials, it could not be determined whether he "willfully or unknowingly" ingested the drug.

Chromulak was taken to a hospital, where he remained in a coma for days.

"This went beyond negligence," Bennett said. "This was deliberate indifference. These people had to consciously not care."

Although doctors advised Pelz three times that her son's chances for recovery were slim and that he should be taken off of life support, she refused.

"It was his birth-month," she said. "I wasn't going to have his children remember that month as the same month that he was buried."

Her dedication paid off and Chromulak eventually awakened.

What also bothers Bennett about the case is that a complete forensic investigation of the room, which he said should have been considered a crime scene, wasn't started until days later.

In the days immediately after Chromulak was found, the room was cleaned, the floors were bleached and the bed sheets were destroyed, Bennett said.

Although Anoka police showed up when Chromulak was found, investigators from the Sheriff's Office criminal investigations division weren't called until three days later to investigate possible crimes including robbery and attempted murder, Bennett said.

Soma said staff members probably cleaned the room immediately after Chromulak was taken away because no one knew that his condition might have been related to illegal drug activity until later.

"They had no knowledge of what was happening, or that a crime may have been committed," Soma said of the workhouse staff's actions right after Chromulak was hospitalized.

No one was ever charged with a crime, and no county employees were disciplined as a result of the incident. But changes were made in procedures, Soma said.

Since the incident, the work release facilities have been moved to a different building with larger, more open dorm-style rooms that make inmate checks easier, he said.

Other changes include requiring that inmates be awakened and required to stand up twice a day, Soma said.

Anoka County Board Chairwoman Margaret Langfeld said she believes the settlement is the largest by far paid by the county in her 22 years on the board. She said the board approved it because the risk of a jury awarding even greater damages was too high.

"We were persuaded that we were better off this way than going to trial," Langfeld said. "And we recognized that the individual truly does have some long-term suffering as result of what happened."

The money will come out of savings the county generated by insuring itself, a strategy may now have to be reviewed, Langfeld said.

She also added that while there were some design flaws in the aging building where Chromulak had been held, the state Department of Corrections, which inspects such facilities annually, had never cited the county for violations.

Chromulak declined to comment Tuesday.

Even though the settlement will help her son pay bills and fulfill obligations, Pelz said, it won't make him or his family whole again.

She remembers trading books with her son, who loved Stephen King novels. Now he can't focus enough to read.

He used to play guitar, but that too is now lost, she said.

"As a parent, that's what hurts most," Pelz said. "You try to do as much as you can for your children, but this isn't going to go away.

"It's never going to get back to the way it was," she said. "It's not going to get better. You just can't go back."