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Officials of a southern New Mexico county say they’re being flooded with calls and emails complaining about the treatment of a former county jail inmate who was held in solitary confinement for nearly two years without a trial.
Complaints began pouring in after Dona Ana announced March 7 it had reached a $15.5 million settlement to end a legal battle with Stephen R. Slevin, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.
“I’ve been getting calls from New York — all over the country,” Sheriff Todd Garrison said.
Garrison’s office alone received dozens of complaints and criticisms even though his office doesn’t run the county jail and wasn’t even the agency whose officers arrested Slevin.
The director of the county’s detention center reports to the county manager, who reports to the elected, five-member Board of Commissioners.
The complaints have included some threats, and that has prompted the commissioners to order extra security for their next meeting.
The settlement stemmed from mediation ordered by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The county was appealing a lower court decision that upheld a $22 million judgment that was awarded last year to Slevin.
From August 2005 to June 2007, Slevin spent 22 months in the county jail after being arrested for drunken driving.
Slevin’s attorney said his client ended up in solitary confinement after someone noted he was suicidal. His lawyer said his health needs were neglected.
The email and phone call backlash from people upset about the Slevin case has hit everyone from the jail officials to the interim county manager’s office to the commissioners, county Commission Chairwoman Karen Perez said.
People have left messages for her that included “strings of obscenities,” Perez said.
She said she doesn’t think those calling and emailing are taking into consideration that several years have passed since Slevin was held in the jail and improvements have been made in its operations since.
“The majority of people there at the time are no longer at the county,” she said.
