Deaths at St. Louis City Justice Center Leave Big Questions

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COURTESY PHOTO

Courtney McNeal (in hat) with his family. He died at the City Justice Center. Details about how he died have not been released.

Courtney McNeal, 41, was determined to give his twin daughters the stability he hadn't gotten as a kid. McNeal's dad passed away when he was young. His mom was into drugs. McNeal met Jennifer Biesboer in 2006, and five years later when she gave birth to Faith and Patience, the twin girls became McNeal's world.

"That's what Courtney lived for every day," Biesboer says.

McNeal was working two fast-food jobs when the girls were born. He later got certified in HVAC repair and picked up stray call-center jobs.

"Whatever it took, he would make things happen for us and put us first," Biesboer says.

In May of 2020, at a gas station in St. Louis' Hamilton Heights neighborhood, private security guards were refilling an ATM with cash when one of them set down a bag containing $64,000. The guard turned to hand something to his partner when, according to a probable-cause statement, McNeal grabbed the bag and took off.

McNeal tripped, dropping his wallet and phone. He got into a tussle with the guard over the money bag, and as the two men wrestled, McNeal tossed as much cash as he could into his car. He drove off with around $15,000 but left behind his wallet, which contained his ID.

McNeal was later arrested and charged with stealing more than $25,000.

This year, McNeal was free on bond, living in the Carondelet neighborhood with his family, when the Thursday before Labor Day police picked him up on a warrant for failing to appear at a court date related to that ATM theft and two lesser charges involving synthetic marijuana and paraphernalia possession.

Five days later, McNeal called Biesboer a little before 9 a.m. from the City Justice Center to let her know he might be getting a court date that very day, meaning there was a good chance he'd be home that evening.

"I'm sorry for the B.S.," he said. "I love you."

That afternoon, Biesboer got another call from the city jail.

"When I answered, it wasn't him," Biesboer says. "It was some lady. I was his legal next of kin. She called me and told me that he had expired."

McNeal's death was one of at least six that occurred in the city jail from the end of April until the beginning of September. In April, Robert Miller, 50, died less than a week before his trial for kidnapping and sodomy was set to begin. July saw the death of Augustus Collier, a 30-year-old who jail administrators say died by suicide. The following month, 33-year-old Dennelle K. Johnson died in custody. Less than a month later, Donald Henry, 48, died on September 3, only three days before McNeal. Each death made headlines when it happened, but it's possible not all the jail deaths were reported.

The ArchCity Defenders' Fatal State Violence Program says that at least one other man, whose name is unknown, died in jail custody this year. ArchCity attorneys uncovered the death through extensive interviews with detainees and individuals recently released from the jail with the intention of better understanding conditions there. They think the death happened in November, resulting from a stabbing incident, but the jail never released anything publicly about it.

Attorneys with the ArchCity Defenders accused the jail of offering only "empty" answers in the wake of these deaths and a lack of transparency concerning how they would be investigated.

Families of at least four of the deceased men have taken it upon themselves to figure out how their loved ones died. Their attorneys have uncovered new information about the circumstances leading up to the detainees' deaths. Though early in the process — no litigation has yet been filed — disturbing details are already coming to light and, if previous wrongful death lawsuits against the justice center are any indicator, the city may be facing steep financial penalties.

Attorney Bill Meehan is currently working on behalf of Biesboer to investigate McNeal's death. Meehan says a medical examiner's report shows that McNeal died of injuries that would suggest he was beaten. He suffered blunt trauma to his torso and lower extremities. The cause of death was a ruptured gastric ulcer, an injury consistent with having been beaten. Biesboer says that when she was allowed to see McNeal's body, there was a "big bump" on the side of his forehead that hadn't been there the week prior.

When asked who might have beaten McNeal, Meehan says, "We think it was COs, correctional officers. But we don't know." He's filed Sunshine requests for surveillance video from inside the City Justice Center. "But in a jail where the locks don't work, who knows if the video cameras work," he says.

Meehan says that his and other attorneys' investigations are integral because the jail can't be trusted to investigate itself.

"They're going to make sure that the results come out the way they want," he says. The prison is not even forthcoming with details in federal reports.

Since 2014, the Death in Custody Reporting Act has encouraged jails and prisons throughout the country to file reports of custody deaths. Those reports are submitted to the Missouri Department of Public Safety, which then submits them to the federal government. Custodial agencies aren't legally required to file these reports, but oftentimes in order to receive federal grant money, the reporting act must be adhered to.

RFT requested the DICRA reports for 2022 and found only four submitted by the City Justice Center. (Monte Chambers, the program manager for St. Louis' Department of Public Safety, said some are still awaiting information from the medical examiner.)

The report stemming from McNeal's death is incredibly thin, saying simply that McNeal was in jail custody when he "became unresponsive at 10:29 a.m." and was transported to SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital, where a doctor pronounced him dead.

The DICRA report for Robert Lee Miller, the man who died two days before his trial was set to begin, is only slightly more detailed. The report says that Miller began complaining of chest pains at around 12:15 a.m. He was having trouble breathing as he was taken by wheelchair to the jail's medical unit, and "soon after his arrival, the subject lost consciousness at 12:34 a.m.," the report says.

Attorney Kevin Young, who is investigating Miller's death, tells the RFT that based on what he's learned about the circumstances surrounding Miller's death, "It's definitely a case. I know enough now to file suit."

Young says that an autopsy shows Miller died of a pulmonary embolism caused by a deep vein thrombosis — a blot clot formed in Miller's veins, likely the legs or arms, and then traveled to an artery in his lungs, cutting off oxygen. Experts say that Miller would have been experiencing symptoms for some time prior to his passing away.

"We have reason to believe that Mr. Miller was exhibiting what should have been concerning symptoms for at least several hours if not maybe longer. And we think the jail just just didn't take him seriously, basically, until it was too late," Kevin Young tells RFT.

Young later stressed in an email that he's early in his investigation and isn't certain whom Miller complained to and when, but that is exactly what he's intent on finding out. Young says he plans to talk to Miller's cellmate at the time of his death. "That will be important," he says.

It's too early to know exactly how much, if any, the city may have to pay out if wrongdoing is found in connection to these deaths. In October, the county jail settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $1.2 million. The plaintiff in that case alleged that jail staff ignored 31-year-old Daniel Stout's obvious signs of medical duress leading up to his death. In the first week of December, the City of St. Louis settled a lawsuit with the surviving family members of DeJuan Brison, who took his own life a few hours after being released from the city jail into custody at the jail in Jennings. Brison's family alleged that the city jail failed to alert the Jennings jail that Brison needed to be on suicide watch. The settlement amount in that case was not disclosed.

Biesboer says that she is still working to accept the fact that her partner of 17 years, the father to her 11-year-old twins, isn't coming home. It's a process made harder by the fact that she doesn't even know the full circumstances surrounding his demise.

"I'm still looking at the door waiting for him to walk in," she says. "My kids still have high school, prom, graduation. He's never gonna be here for any of that."