Miller County asks judge to toss amended complaint in jail death suit, calls it a ‘fishing expedition’

TEXARKANA, Ark. — Miller County is asking a federal judge to strike an amended complaint in the wrongful-death lawsuit over Dominique Rashad Steel Sr.’s death in the county jail, arguing the family’s lawyers filed it without permission and are using it to dodge a ruling that could end the case.

The amended complaint, filed Oct. 16, adds a new account of how Steel died. It says the medical episode that killed him was “brought about by the use/ingesting/contact with contraband/illegal drugs,” and that jail employees have a “culture/practice/custom of bringing in drugs and contraband and allowing the same to be brought into the jail facility.”

That is a shift from the original complaint, which did not say what caused the emergency. The county said in its July answer that Steel died from a “self-induced consumption of drugs.”

Steel, 30, became unresponsive in his cell on or about Feb. 27 and died March 1, according to the complaint. Zoey Baca, the mother of his two minor children, sued the county June 9 in the Texarkana Division of the Western District of Arkansas, alleging jail staff ignored other inmates’ screams for more than 40 minutes while Steel needed help. The county says staff reached the cell within two to three minutes of his cellmate pressing the emergency button.

The amended complaint keeps the 40-minute allegation and the four other jail deaths cited in the original suit as evidence of a pattern. It adds that the jail “has had numerous incidents of illegal drugs/contraband being in the jail facility” on a “monthly/yearly basis,” that jail staff are trained in first aid and CPR to recognize medical emergencies, and that the county’s failure to keep drugs out of the jail “directly led to Mr. Steel’s medical episode.”

It does not say who brought drugs into the jail, how Steel got them or which incidents it is referring to.

The county’s response

In a combined motion and brief filed Monday, the county’s lawyers argue the amended complaint is “a legal nullity” because the family filed it months after the deadline to amend without asking the county or the court for permission. Under the federal rules, a plaintiff can amend once without leave within 21 days of the defendant’s answer or motion to dismiss. The county answered July 13 and moved for judgment on the pleadings July 23.

Baca’s lawyers filed a motion for leave to amend the day after the amended complaint, arguing that because the court has not entered a scheduling order, “there is currently not a date in place for Plaintiff to amend her complaint without leave of Court,” according to the county’s brief, which quotes the motion.

The county says that argument confuses two different rules. “Plaintiff filed the Amended Complaint first and only thereafter sought to justify the filing,” the brief states.

The county also argues the amendment would be futile because it does not fix the problems the county raised in July. It says the family’s lawyers had “the blueprint to overcome the Motion” and “merely repackaged the same conclusory assertions in slightly expanded form.”

“From Defendant’s perspective, this was done both to circumvent the pending dispositive motion, and in an attempt to use discovery as a fishing expedition to validate claims,” the motion states. The brief says the amendment shows the family “initiated this action before possessing sufficient factual information to support a viable claim.”

Two of the four other deaths cited in the complaint were suicides, the county argues, which it says are not similar enough to a drug death to show a pattern. It says the complaint never uses the words “deliberate indifference,” the standard for holding a county liable, and that alleging the county “should have known” of a danger describes negligence, not a constitutional violation.

The county also turns the family’s own allegations against them. Because the complaint says state standards require cell checks at least every 60 minutes and says Steel’s episode lasted about 40 minutes, “a routine hourly welfare check might not have been required during the relevant timeframe,” the brief states.

“There is no allegation identifying who introduced contraband into the facility, how Decedent obtained it, whether any jail employee participated in or knew of such conduct, or whether any policymaker was aware of and deliberately indifferent to a pattern of similar incidents,” the brief states.

The county asks U.S. District Judge John Thomas Shepherd to strike the amended complaint, deny leave to amend and grant its pending motion for judgment on the pleadings, which would dismiss the case.

Shepherd ruled Oct. 7 that he would not set discovery deadlines until he decides that motion. No hearing is set.

The family is represented by Michael L. Bernoudy Jr. and Jasmine M. Bernoudy of the Bernoudy Law Firm in Marshall, Texas. Miller County is represented by Jamie Jones Walsworth and Daniel Woodyard of Friday, Eldredge & Clark in Little Rock.

Second jail lawsuit set for December trial

The county faces a separate federal lawsuit over conditions at the jail that is set for a jury trial Dec. 14 in Texarkana, also before Shepherd.

Tyrone Harris, who was held at the Miller County Detention Center in 2020 and 2021 on a federal supervised-release violation, claims a sergeant shot him with pepper balls to force him to submit to a temperature check and that three other officers beat him while he was handcuffed. He also says the jail left him for months without the medication he is prescribed for schizophrenia.

Harris, a Hot Springs resident, sued Sheriff Wayne Easley, Sgt. Richard Henderson, Capt. Golden Adams and officers Brandon Yeley and Mason Roberts under the Eighth Amendment, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Arkansas Civil Rights Act. He first filed in Miller County Circuit Court in 2023, dismissed that case after it was moved to federal court and refiled in June 2025 with Little Rock civil rights attorney Michael Laux.

The officers tell a different story in jail reports filed with the court. Henderson wrote that Harris refused a COVID-19 temperature check on Dec. 31, 2020, cursed at him and “acted like he was going to throw something at me, so I deployed my JPX,” a pepper-spray device. Adams wrote that on July 2, 2021, Harris spat in his face while handcuffed and that he pushed Harris’s face away with an open hand, then carried him to his cell.

Easley and the officers asked the court Sept. 16 to throw out the case before trial, arguing neither incident violated Harris’s rights and that the officers are protected by qualified immunity. Easley said in an affidavit that he was not involved in either incident, does not believe he has ever met Harris and that the jail had “a robust plan and system in place” for inmates with mental illness.

Harris responded to that motion Oct. 5 and the county replied Oct. 16, court records show, so the motion is ready for a ruling. Claims against the jail’s medical contractor, Southern Health Partners Inc., and two of its providers were dismissed by agreement in September.

The county is represented in that case by Jason Owens of Owens & Parker Law Firm in Conway.