Connecticut has agreed to pay $3.75 million to the estate of a mentally and physically ill man who died at New Haven Correctional Center after allegedly being doused with pepper spray and piled on by officers in violation of correction guidelines.
The death of 30-year-old Carl “Robby” Talbot of West Haven on March 21, 2019, was ruled a homicide by the state medical examiner, and his parents alleged in a federal lawsuit filed two years ago that their son was the victim of excessive force and medical neglect.
Notice of a settlement was filed in U.S. District Court on Jan. 21. Details were not available until Wednesday, when the legislature’s Judiciary Committee posted an agenda for a vote Friday on approving an award “in excess of $2.5 million.”
The committee’s co-chair, Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, and ranking House Republican Rep. Craig Fishbein of Wallingford said the exact amount was $3.75 million.
Fishbein said he has questions about the degree to which correction officials have acted to increase supervision at the jail and evaluate the staff.
A spokesman for the Department of Correction could not be reached Wednesday, a state holiday.
After reviewing court documents and meeting Monday with the assistant attorneys general who negotiated the settlement, Fishbein said, he had questions about whether the incident was evidence of a systemic problem.
Talbot was on the floor of a shower and refused to get up when correction officers decided to spray him with oleoresin capsicum, a pepper spray known as OC. They neglected to assess his physical condition before its use, as required by department guidelines, the suit says.
Court records state that Talbot was obese, had respiratory problems, a history of mental illness and drug addiction, and was suffering from withdrawal after being denied his prescribed methadone when he began acting erratically and defiantly.
Rather than deescalate or comfort him, the lawsuit says, he was sprayed four times, including twice at close range after being restrained, despite no physical threat to staff. He was kicked at least once.
“He is effectively a scared, blinded man, under significant mental distress, unable to breathe, defend himself, or obtain relief from the effects of the OC sprayed twice into his eyes and face,” the lawsuit says.
Officers left him “hogtied” in a cell, still wearing contaminated clothes, after he was sprayed and subdued by several officers piling on him, leaving him struggling for breath, the lawsuit states.
“Once he was restrained in the cell, they claimed they looked in every 15 minutes,” Fishbein said. “It is alleged those records were fraudulent and that rigor already had set in when he was found dead.”