DUCHESNE, Utah, Dec. 6, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — A Duchesne County Jail nurse has been found not guilty of negligent homicide in the 2016 death of a 21-year-old inmate in her care.
Jana Clyde, 55, of Duchesne, had been charged with the class A misdemeanor in the Dec. 1, 2016, death of Madison Jensen, 21, who died from dehydration four days after being booked into jail.
A deadlocked jury in June resulted in a mistrial, sending the case to a bench trial Oct. 3-6 in 8th District Court. Judge Don M. Torgerson issued the not guilty verdict in a 30-page written decision Monday.
While noting there were “obvious institutional failures at the Duchesne County Jail” that resulted in Jensen’s death, Judge Torgerson said “the court is not persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that Nurse Clyde’s failure to perceive the risk of Madison’s death was a gross deviation from the standard of care.”
Jensen, of Roosevelt, was booked into jail Nov. 27, 2016, for investigation of possession and use of marijuana and heroin, along with possession of drug paraphernalia, court documents state.
She was arrested at the demand of her father “as a path to drug treatment,” the verdict states, also noting that she was “held at the jail on specious probable cause.”
“Unfortunately, Madison was not a reliable source of information about her medical history or suffering. She did not tell Nurse Clyde that she had been to the emergency room a few days before with withdrawal symptoms, or explain any of her history before she entered the jail,” the verdict states.
The symptoms Clyde knew about “were within normal range … for someone experiencing opiate withdrawal,” and corrections officers “did not report serious concerns” about Jensen to the nurse, according to the verdict.
“Nurse Clyde relies heavily on information from correctional officers and inmates since she treats 160-200 inmates and rarely sees the inmates in their cells. And that information was not provided to her,” Torgerson writes.
“Nurse Clyde and all of the jail staff should have done things differently. But none of them perceived the risk of death here, even though everyone had similar medical training.”
Clyde, a licensed practical nurse since 2005, started working at the Duchesne County Jail in 2013 and was the jail’s only full-time nurse at the time of Jensen’s death. She continues to work at the jail.
And I was once in duchesne county having a seizure with alcoholism in the first holding tank I scratched the glass with a cup trying to get help almost dying what did they do for me nothing except charged me $1,000 for that scratch on plexiglass I’ll bet you everything I got that scratch is still there to this day and that was 2002 maybe 2001 I’ll back up this inmate that died because duchesne county jail does not take care of their prisoners they just take their money and I’ll stand with that