The Estate brings suit against the corrections officers who failed to intervene to prevent and stop that abuse. The Estate, pursuant to the Substantive Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, brings this action for redress against the corrections officers who through their abuse of Tony caused his death. Instead, corrections officers and their commanding officers worked together in a scheme to conceal the horrific abuse, delaying medical treatment for five hours, long enough to ensure Tony did not survive to tell the story of what happened to him. Any of these individuals could have saved his life by calling 911 and summoning an ambulance. Surveillance camera screenshots included in this complaint. While Tony languished naked and dying of hypothermia in the early morning hours of January 26 and his chances for survival trickled away, numerous corrections officers and medical staff wandered over to his open cell door to spectate and be entertained by his condition, as shown by the Although the medical examiner has not yet released the autopsy report, it is clear that Tony’s death was wrongful, the result of horrific, malicious abuse and mountains of deliberate indifference.

But also, without the heroism of a corrections officer who dared to preserve security camera footage on her phone and get the recordings to the Estate, it would have been impossible for the Estate to dismantle the scheme of silence and lies within the Sheriff’s Department and reconstruct what happened to Tony on the morning of January 26, 2023.

Nor would he have been denied the prompt emergency medical treatment that would have saved him after his removal from that frigid place. Without the malice, deliberate indifference, and failure to intervene of nearly a dozen correction officers at the jail, and the cooperation of these officers and their superiors in a scheme to deprive Tony of his civil rights and ultimately of his life, Tony could never have been killed, likely by being placed in a restraint chair in the jail kitchen’s walk-in freezer or similar frigid environment and left there for hours.

Question: how does a man literally freeze to death while incarcerated in a modern, climate-controlle d jail, in the custody and care of corrections officer s? The case provides contrasting examples of both the worst of humanity, and also its best.

Eating with emperors by jake smith