By Andrew Engelson
A 43-year-old woman, Angela Majoor, died of dehydration, malnutrition, low electrolyte levels and renal failure at the South Correctional Entity (SCORE) jail in Des Moines in May 2023 after spending three days in custody—most of it curled up on the floor of a temporary booking cell.
In a fatality report filed with the State Department of Health (DOH) in February, SCORE said that the Auburn Police Department brought Majoor in on charges of trespass and theft. She had been booked 27 previous times at the jail, which is owned and operated by six cities in South King County. Majoor was in poor health, with the report noting she was “discovered to have sores on her legs” by a nurse at the jail. Majoor resisted a full booking and further exam by staff nurses, the report said, noting that she lay under a blanket on the holding cell floor for two days.
Heavily redacted incident reports filed by SCORE staff after the death, which PubliCola obtained through a public records request, indicated that Majoor was offered meals and fluids, with one officer noting that “I put the cup to [Majoor’s] mouth as she took multiple sips of Gatorade, notifying her to take small drinks. I told her to drink Gatorade throughout the day.”
Majoor was moved by wheelchair to a medical cell on her third day in custody, and was found dead in that cell on May 19, a little more than 24 hours later. The fatality report filed with DOH said that in addition to dehydration, contributing factors in Majoor’s death included “severe protein calorie malnutrition” and acute methamphetamine intoxication.
Members of Majoor’s family did not respond to requests for comment.
The report does not indicate that SCORE provided Majoor with any detox care. The report observes that jail guards brought her with meals but concluded, “Meal sacks were not removed at the time a new meal was served. This made it difficult for Corrections Officers to assess how much food was being consumed.”
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Majoor’s death was one of four in custody at SCORE last year, a large number for a jail that houses between 600 and 850 inmates per year. Last year, the ACLU of Washington filed a lawsuit against King County after six people died in one year at the downtown Seattle county jail, which houses twice as many inmates.
“No one should die in custody due to negligence from the entity responsible for their care,” ACLU of Washington legal director La Rond Baker said. “People do not lose their dignity or humanity when they become incarcerated. Governments running jails have a duty to ensure people involuntarily detained are kept safe and well.”
The SCORE fatality report also includes a long list of new procedures SCORE says it put in place in response to Majoor’s death, including nurse visits to booking cells every four hours, initiating detox protocols as soon as inmates are booked, and checks by mental health staff on inmates held longer than 3 days who are experiencing detox. The report said Majoor was well-known to staff at SCORE and implied that this may have led to inadequate care: “Over familiarity with the decedent and previous detox experiences were discussed as possible issues.”
At the time of Majoor’s death, medical care at SCORE was provided on a contract basis by Wellpath, the nation’s largest prison health care company, which was the subject of Congressional hearings in December and which been accused of widespread incidents of negligence, insufficient staffing, and substandard care (a Department of Justice investigation in 2021 found Wellpath violated the civil rights of inmates in California).
Nate Bingham, an attorney representing a number of people whose family members died at SCORE, including Damaris Rodriguez, who died naked on the floor of her cell in 2018 and whose family was awarded a $2 million settlement from King County, said that Wellpath reduces costs by minimizing the care it provides to inmates. He pointed to a letter from several US senators in Decemmber raising concerns that Wellpath consistently understaffs facilities. “These issues are entirely consistent with the deficiencies I have seen in Wellpath’s work at SCORE,” Bingham said.
Nicole Jackson, an assistant professor in autopsy pathology at the University of Washington, reviewed the fatality report and redacted incident reports, and based on the limited information they contain, conceded that even with the best of care it would have been difficult to prevent Majoor’s death. “It is highly probable that this individual entered the facility severely dehydrated and/or lost fluids in the toilet (i.e. diarrhea) and did not correct this hydration with the provided food and water.”
SCORE director Devon Schrum said she could not comment further on the unexpected fatality report filed in response to Majoor’s death. Schrum said no staff were disciplined in response to the incident. “During its 13 years, the jail has had 11 unexpected fatalities, each of which were investigated thoroughly, and those investigations now occur through the state mandated process for review of unexpected fatalities,” Schrum said.
Prior to PubliCola’s reporting in September, SCORE had not filed fatality reports with DOH about any of the deaths in custody — which are required by law within 120 days of the incident.
By Andrew Engelson
Disciplinary records from the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention confirm that the guard, Emmanuel Palaita, did perform a check about an hour before the inmate, Keith Denegal, was found dead in his cell in the early morning of February 20, 2022. However, Palaita failed to do the previous mandatory check, leaving Denegal alone in his cell for more than an hour and a half, in violation of jail rules requiring checks at least once an hour. An investigator concluded that Palaita’s “failure to act endangered the safety of the inmate population he was responsible for.”