Mississippi sheriff overseeing violent department faces yet another lawsuit after yet another man dies in custody

• Mississippi's Rankin County Sheriff's Department is beset by violent controversy.
• A court convicted five Rankin deputies in August for torturing two Black men.
• A lawsuit now alleges the department ignored an inmate's health condition until it was too late.

The Rankin County Sheriff's Department is facing another lawsuit.

Katie Carson sued the department in federal court in November, accusing jail employees of doing nothing to prevent Christopher Ray, with whom she has a child, from dying by suicide inside the jail in 2021. The lawsuit names Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey and six county-jail employees as defendants.

The Rankin County Sheriff's Department has a history of violent interactions that have drawn both the national media's and federal authorities' attention.

At least five men in the department's custody have died in recent years, Business Insider previously reported, and the department's been under considerable scrutiny since several deputies pleaded guilty to torturing two Black men in August. A recent investigation from The New York Times found dozens of other victims of abuse at the hands of department officials.

Despite the string of controversies, the sheriff has yet to face any consequences and, in fact, was reelected in November after running unopposed. Bailey has previously said there's no way he can monitor the behavior of everyone in his department when asked about the behavior of the five convicted deputies, some of whom called themselves the "Goon Squad."

The case of Christopher Ray

According to Carson's lawsuit, police took Ray to the Rankin County jail on October 31, 2020, after his bail-bond company turned him in. At the time, Ray had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court for a drug charge, according to the lawsuit.

Jail employees first put Ray in a "segregation pod" to comply with COVID-19 protocols, according to court documents.

The suit says that a few days later, jail employees moved him to a different cell and placed him on medical watch after he was diagnosed with complications from drug withdrawal.

Officers monitored Ray using cameras inside his new cell and described him as "anxious and depressed," the document states. According to the lawsuit, Ray first attempted suicide on November 8, when he tried to kill himself in the jail shower.

The document says that after the first attempt, Ray returned to his monitored cell and attempted suicide again.

Ray's second suicide attempt was inside a cell monitored by video 24-7. According to the suit, he remained unresponsive inside his cell for 44 minutes before any jail staff intervened.

The lawsuit says that "some or all" of the named defendants witnessed Ray's first suicide attempt and talked about it afterward. One lieutenant said jail employees took no measures to reduce Ray's risk to himself because they thought he was a "pussy" and wouldn't try to kill himself a second time, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says defendants who witnessed Ray's first suicide attempt also did not report or document the failed attempt and did not try to provide Ray medical attention.

After Ray was transported to the hospital, the lawsuit also says Bailey told Ray's mother that his second suicide attempt came after midnight on November 9, which the complaint says was a "deliberate falsehood" meant to "deflect the suspicion of any misconduct by his detention officers."

Ray died in the hospital on November 10, 2020, according to the complaint.

Carson's lawsuit accuses the sheriff's department of having a "culture" of ignoring its detainees' and inmates' known health risks.

This is not the first time the sheriff's department has been accused of ignoring medical needs.

A deadly history at the Rankin County Sheriff's Department

In May 2021, Cory Jackson died in the Rankin County jail. Jackson's family previously told BI they were taking him to the hospital during a mental-health crisis when he jumped from their car. Sheriff's deputies arrested him for disorderly conduct.

Jackson's family says deputies ignored repeated requests to transport him to the hospital. The deputies said that paramedics insisted Jackson was "too violent for them to do anything," according to records obtained by BI.

After deputies took him to the jail, footage shows Jackson thrashing in a restraint chair for over an hour before becoming unresponsive.

Adam Coker also died inside the jail. Police arrested Coker for selling meth to an informant in September 2020, according to an incident report. Jail security-camera footage obtained by BI shows Coker pacing around a jail cell for hours and vomiting several times without anyone providing medical attention before becoming unresponsive and dying.

A sheriff's department spokesperson declined to comment on Carson's lawsuit when reached by BI, citing the ongoing litigation. An attorney for Carson did not immediately return BI's request for comment.