HELENA, Mont. — The Montana Supreme Court has cleared Hill and Blaine county officials of discrimination in the slow, painful death of a teenager suffering from alcohol withdrawal symptoms while in jail for more than four days.
The court on Tuesday overturned one district judge’s ruling and upheld another’s that the discrimination claim filed with Montana Human Rights Bureau over the death of 18-year-old Allen Longsoldier Jr., also known as A.J., was without merit.
“We acknowledge the heartbreaking truth that Allen Longsoldier, Jr. — a gifted young man — suffered horrendously while dying slowly from alcohol withdrawal syndrome,” Justice Beth Baker wrote in the 5-0 decision. “On this record, however, the Montana Human Rights Act is not a proper legal remedy for his suffering.”
Longsoldier, a basketball standout from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, was arrested in November 2009 after his probation officer couldn’t contact him. Over the next three days in the Hill County Detention Center jail, Longsoldier didn’t sleep and couldn’t keep down water. His jailers recognized that he was experiencing alcohol withdrawal, Baker wrote.
“Officers observed Longsoldier hallucinating, talking to himself, gagging, dry heaving, sweating and pleading for help,” the court ruling said.
The officers brought him to Northern Montana Hospital in Havre, where a doctor gave him prescriptions for anxiety medication that were never filled. After he was brought back to jail and his condition worsened, a dispatcher called the hospital but was told by a nurse that Longsoldier was “playing them” and “he just doesn’t like being there.”
Longsoldier died of delirium tremens, or the DTs, on Nov. 23, 2009, more than four days after he was arrested.
Longsoldier’s estate, represented by his friend Summer Stricker, filed a human rights complaint that Longsoldier’s prescription was not filled and he died because the officers discriminated against him for being a Native American and because of his disability, alcoholism.
