Antonio Hunter spent years dealing with a painful, embarrassing, and dangerous medical problem while the corporate executives who control healthcare at Pickneyville Correctional denied him surgery.
EAST ST. LOUIS, Il. — Yesterday afternoon, after four days of emotional testimony, an eight-person federal jury voted to award Antonio Hunter $5 million in damages for the years he spent suffering from an untreated medical condition in Pickneyville Correctional Center.
Mr. Hunter suffered from rectal prolapse, a condition in which the lowest portion of the large intestine protrudes from the anus. He suffered from this condition while incarcerated at the Pickneyville Correctional Center from 2018 to 2022. Despite doctors having correctly diagnosed the problem, and prison staff being aware of it, Dr. Stephen Ritz, the Corporate Medical Director of Wexford Health Sources, refused to approve surgery to correct it. Wexford has a contract with the State of Illinois to provide healthcare in Illinois prisons.
Mr. Hunter lived with his condition for four years while incarcerated, forced to literally push his own rectum back into his body several times a day, and manually disimpact it in order to defecate. In addition to being extremely painful and humiliating, this condition required him to miss out on normal activities and forced him to live in disgusting and unsanitary conditions.
In 2021, Mr. Hunter filed a civil rights lawsuit against Dr. Ritz. The lawsuit charged him with violating the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Only then was he approved to receive surgery, and his condition has been corrected.
The case was previously tried last summer, and resulted in a hung jury. This time, a jury of six women and two men ruled for Mr. Hunter and awarded him $4 million in compensatory damages, and an additional $1 million in punitive damages.
“What Mr. Hunter had to live with, day in and day out, is inhumane and infuriating,” says attorney Maria Makar, who represents Mr. Hunter. “Wexford has a duty to care for the people in IDOC custody, and not to force them to live in constant pain and humiliation. We are pleased that this jury understood that Mr. Hunter deserves basic health and human dignity.”
Mr. Hunter is represented by Julia Rickert and Maria Makar of the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy.
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To read the complaint in Mr. Hunter’s case, click here.
