Inmate Dexter Barry didn’t receive his anti-rejection medications while in the Duval County jail. He died a few days after he was released. | Courtesy photo via the Tributary
Published on February 7, 2025 at 10:45 am
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The family of a 54-year-old heart-transplant patient who died after a short stay in the Duval County jail settled a federal lawsuit over his death for $300,000.
Dexter Barry was arrested in November 2022 for allegedly threatening his neighbor during an argument over an internet bill. Barry, who received a new heart in 2020, repeatedly told the officer who arrested him that he was a heart transplant recipient and needed to take his anti-rejection pills multiple times a day.
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The next morning, according to the court transcript, Barry told a judge the same.
Records from the Duval County jail obtained by The Tributary in 2023 showed that Armor Correctional Health Services, the company that operated medical care at the facility at the time, noted Barry’s need for his life-sustaining medication was “urgent,” but it never arrived at the jail during Barry’s two-day jail stay.
Barry died three days after he was released. An autopsy purchased by his family confirmed his death was a cardiac arrest brought on by an autoimmune rejection.
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Dr. Maya Guglin, an Indiana cardiologist on the board at the American College of Cardiology, said organ transplant recipients have to take anti-rejection medications daily because their bodies view the new organ as an invasion that must be fought off.
“If you just drop those medications, everyone is eventually going to reject that organ,” she previously told The Tributary, adding that even though Barry restarted the medication upon his release, the damage had already been done.
The lawsuit, filed by Jacksonville civil rights attorney Andrew Bonderud, said Barry took his medicine diligently every day before his arrest, and, during a check-up seven months earlier, a doctor determined his heart “was in excellent condition” and that his body was responding well to the transplant with medications.
Bonderud had no comment about the settlement.
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters dropped Armor as the jail’s medical provider in September 2023. The jail’s certification from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care was planned on probation five months early because the commission found Armor’s medical care was deficient. He signed a more expensive contract with NaphCare.
During Armor’s contract, the lawsuit says, the company’s staffing levels were so low that the then-corrections director asked for volunteers from the Jacksonville Fire & Rescue Department to help. The request, Bonderud wrote, did not lead to additional resources to address staffing shortages.
The settlement is at least the second Waters has agreed to after he lobbied Jacksonville City Council members last year to enact a new and rare law regarding lawsuit settlements. Under the law, he or the City Council president must approve all lawsuit settlements involving his office.
This story is published through a partnership between Jacksonville Today and The Tributary.
