The parents of an inmate killed at the Shelby County jail last year are now suing in federal court over his death with the backing of civil rights attorney Ben Crump.

Marcus Donald, 38, died last year after allegedly being strangled by his cellmate, Stephen Robinson, according to the suit filed Friday, Nov. 17, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. Donald was found unresponsive in his cell on Nov. 17, 2022, and was taken to the hospital, where he was declared brain-dead six days later. 

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Marilyn and Charles Donald, Marcus Donald’s parents, are suing Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr., chief jailer Kirk Fields and Shelby County government for an amount to be determined “according to the proof” but no less than $75,000,000 as well as attorneys’ fees.

The suit also names 11 other jail staff members as defendants.

This is the second federal lawsuit that Bonner, Fields and Shelby County have been named defendants in recent months regarding an inmate death. 

In April, they were sued by the widow of Gershun Freeman, an inmate who died at the jail shortly before Donald on Oct. 5, 2022, after an altercation with corrections deputies. 

Freeman’s widow, Nicole Freeman, is seeking $100 million. Bonner, Fields and Shelby County have all filed motions to dismiss themselves from the suit.

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Donald’s death

Donald was booked into the jail on May 6, 2022, for aggravated assault. He had allegedly pointed a gun at Darry Atkins, who was driving in his neighborhood at the time, according to an affidavit.

After driving off, Donald allegedly followed Atkins and pointed the gun at him again. Atkins later stopped in the cove where Donald lived and he was eventually detained after police arrived.

His bail was set at $5,000, which the suit says he couldn’t afford, so he remained in custody. 

On Nov. 17, he entered a guilty plea in Shelby County General Sessions Criminal Court Division 9 Sheila Renfroe’s courtroom. The judgment was entered at 11:30 a.m. and should have made him immediately eligible for release, according to the suit. 

Instead, Donald was taken back to the jail, where he would stay the night.

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The suit says that Fields, if asked, would say jail staff needs to receive a physical copy of judgment orders prior to releasing inmates. 

But the suit rebuffs that claim, saying jail staff could have looked online in the Shelby County Criminal Justice Portal, which contains criminal case information, including about dispositions, could have called the court clerk’s office or asked a deputy in Renfroe’s courtroom what the decision was in Donald’s case.

At 5:30 p.m., Donald was transferred to Robinson’s cell, despite Robinson threatening to kill Donald if guards did so, according to the suit.

Robinson, who was in jail on a first-degree murder charge, routinely talked about the crime in a “cold, detached way” with other inmates, the suit says.

“But now he was saying he would kill Marcus Donald,” the suit reads.

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Sometime before 10 p.m., the suit says, Donald pleaded with a Mrs. Grandberry — who is named as a defendant by last name only — that he “should have checked out hours ago” and that he feared for his life being with Robinson.

“Ms. Grandberry — plainly indifferent to either concern, responded, ‘That ain’t got s--- to do with me. I ain’t coming to work tomorrow no way.’ With that, she walked out of 3-E (Donald’s cell pod),” the suit reads.

At 10:45 p.m. — the last time a guard would come through the cell pod before finding Donald unresponsive — he pleaded with them to have him moved, according to the suit. 

Deputy Jailer Dontreal Hawkins allegedly reported Donald’s concerns to three supervisors who are also named in the suit but was told to ignore them and keep making her security checks.

Citing video footage of Donald’s cell pod the night he was killed, sometime between 10:45 p.m. and when he was found, he and Robinson began arguing and then fighting, the suit says.

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“As other inmates in 3-E tried desperately to summon the guards for help, Robinson, in his own words, slowly ‘put him to sleep,’” the suit reads.

Other inmates then began waving T-shirts and blankets at the cameras in the pod to get the attention of the guards but to no avail, according to the suit. 

The suit says Hawkins, as well as Sgt. Kimberly Wallace and Deputy Jailer Brenda McCoy, entered Donald’s cell pod at 12:23 a.m. They called a code blue (an inmate altercation) and a code white (a medical emergency) a minute later.

Despite that, it was five minutes before they rendered aid to Donald, according to the suit. 

Paramedics arrived at 12:42 a.m., the suit says.

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Shelby County jail has ‘unwritten rule’ of holding inmates longer than necessary

The suit says Donald is not the only inmate held in custody even after being declared eligible for release. It alleges the jail has an “unwritten rule” of doing so and has been doing it since at least 2019. 

Since then, it says inmates have been taken back to the jail and held for “ten or more hours” while waiting to be “processed out,” even after being declared eligible for release by the court, according to the suit.

“Even inmates who surrender themselves on bench or capias warrants, and are released by the court without bail, must get booked into the jail, then processed out — a procedure regularly taking up to thirty-six hours,” the suit reads.

The suit says nothing legally requires inmates to be returned to the jail for processing after being declared eligible for release and that other jurisdictions in the state don’t implement the practice. It does recognize, however, that it may be necessary for administrative concerns to do so but that processing shouldn’t take as long as it often does.

“Unfortunately, the SCSO’s holdover policy is so pervasive that lawyers practicing criminal law in Shelby County, and the judges they appear before, simply accept the custom as the Jail’s standard way of doing business,” the suit says.

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Jail is also understaffed, poorly supervised 

The suit also alleges that the Shelby County jail is understaffed — and, therefore, poorly supervised.

Citing three incidents between 2020 and 2022 of other inmates who either died at the jail or were severely injured, the suit says understaffing — and the poor supervision of individual cell pods that comes with it — contributed to their deaths. 

On Dec. 21, 2021, for example, Coredero Ragland was beaten in the head with a piece of concrete his cellmate obtained by using a metal shank to carve a chunk out of the cell wall, according to the suit.

“For several days, either no jail guard noticed the new hole in his wall, or none cared. Several days later, he dropped the concrete brick into a pillowcase, then used it to bash in Mr. Ragland’s head,” the suit reads.

Twenty-three members of jail staff were absent at the time of the incident, according to the suit. The jail also had 85 vacant guard positions. 

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But per a 2021 independent report ordered by a federal judge as the result of another past lawsuit about inmate safety during the pandemic, actual vacancies at the jail were around 157. 

Yet according to a staffing study, the report said the actual need was around 300, the suit says.

“The final report strongly recommended the jail reduce its inmate population, if it could not increase staff, by utilizing ‘alternative forms of custody.’”