By Lori Pilger
Lincoln Journal Star, Neb.
LINCOLN, Neb. — The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office has agreed to pay $395,000 to the family of a 20-year-old man killed at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in 2020 after he was placed in a cell with a mentally ill and dangerous man.
The Nebraska State Legislature is expected to approve the amount for Kevin Carter’s family next week as part of LB534.
Both the Attorney General’s Office and the family’s attorney declined the Journal Star’s request for comment on the settlement, which ends a year and a half of legal wrangling over Carter’s death at Angelo Bol’s hands.
In 2023, Carter’s mother, Paige Carter of Council Bluffs, Iowa, filed the civil rights suit alleging Scott Frakes, then-director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, Michelle Wilhelm, the warden at the State Pen, and Dr. Harbans Deol, the former medical director for the prisons, and others had violated her son’s Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
Attorney Thomas Monaghan argued they were liable based on Bol’s medical treatment failure and on their failure to supervise prison staff in selecting cellmates.
Frakes and Deol were alleged to have known Bol was dangerous to other inmates and staff but failed to ensure he was properly medicated to reduce his risk to other people in the prison.
According to the state court trial, Bol — who was serving a life sentence for fatally shooting a coworker in the Gibbon Packing parking lot in 2014 — had been involuntarily medicated for a time in prison.
But he had been taken off his antipsychotic medication by the time Carter was placed in his cell.
About a week later, on Nov. 6, 2020, Bol killed the Council Bluffs man in their locked cell, believing he had been working with a rival Sudanese tribe and placed there to kill him.
A Lincoln Regional Center doctor called it a “classic case of insanity.”
Last summer, a state court judge agreed, finding Bol not responsible by reason of insanity for the murder.
In September, the civil case cleared a legal hurdle when Senior U.S. District Judge John Gerrard denied the state’s motion to dismiss the case.
While prison officials can’t be found liable for “surprise attacks” of inmates, where they had no reason to believe a particular inmate was especially violent, here, the judge said, the defendants are alleged to have known Bol was a “particularly volatile inmate.”
The plaintiff alleged Frakes and Wilhelm knew the constitutional risk posed by inadequate training or supervision, based on a pattern of unconstitutional acts by prison staff.
Carter’s attorneys pointed to Terry Berry’s killing at the hands of his cellmate, Patrick Schroeder, in 2017.
Like Bol, Schroeder was serving a life sentence for murder when he killed his cellmate, Berry, after telling staff at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution to move him.
The state of Nebraska ultimately agreed to pay $479,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the Scottsbluff man’s family, who blamed state prison officials and employees for the decision to place Berry, a 22-year-old just days from a parole hearing on a short sentence for forgery and assault, in a cell with Schroeder.
Carter similarly was just 20 and had been serving a short sentence, nearing parole, when he was placed with Bol.
Much like in Schroeder’s case, on the day of Carter’s killing in 2020, prison records showed Bol had gone to a case worker asking for his cellmate, who had been placed in his cell about a week earlier, to be moved.
Carter wasn’t moved, and that night Bol beat and strangled him to death.
Among the other claims set to be approved by the Legislature are:
* $950,000 to settle Clementine Hernandez’s lawsuit against the Nebraska State Patrol and State Trooper Jaquelline Rivas, who struck Hernandez while making an illegal U-turn on U.S. 34 on April 12, 2022 , causing his vehicle to roll several times and land in the ditch and leaving him with serious injuries.
* $375,000 to settle Jay Krejci’s lawsuit against the State of Nebraska for being struck by William Mattison, who went through a red light during an active pursuit by State Trooper Michael Mallery, at South 48th Street and Pioneers Boulevard in Lincoln on May 4, 2021.
* $185,000 to settle former State Patrol Capt. Gerald Krolikowski’s lawsuit alleging retaliation after he reported his belief that the State Patrol was using carrier enforcement funds for things like SWAT and hazardous device technicians, contrary to state statutes and its contract with the Nebraska Department of Transportation.
* $162,500 to settle a lawsuit over a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services employee placing a 17-year-old girl, whose mother was missing, with a man (the father of one of the girl’s friends) who was visibly intoxicated and ultimately physically assaulted her in 2018 before the HHS employee removed her.
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