Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — The estate of a 19-year-old man who committed suicide while incarcerated at the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison is suing the Utah Department of Corrections.
Brock Tucker died in his cell in October of 2014, just two months before he was scheduled to go before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. He was sent to prison in September of 2012, when he was 17, after violating the terms of his probation. His convictions include theft, attempted theft by receiving stolen property, failing to stop at an officer's command and assault by a prisoner.
Tucker's estate and their attorney, Rocky Anderson, filed a civil lawsuit Monday in 3rd District Court claiming Tucker, who had a diminished IQ and had suffered abuse most of his life, was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment while in prison, including more than 154 days of the last year of Brock’s life in "torturous solitary confinement."
In their lawsuit, Tucker's family notes that he had a "tragic life," being a "victim of neglect, physical abuse, psychological abuse, and ultimately torture" from the day he was born.
He was allegedly abused while in juvenile detention and eventually ran away from that facility, the lawsuit states. In 2009, Tucker was sent to the Provo Canyon School where "he was beaten by staff multiple times, and on one occasion Brock had his head beaten into concrete by a staff member until Brock was rendered unconscious," the lawsuit states.
By 2011, Tucker's estate said he was "fully beaten down from repeated mental and physical abuse at the hands of those charged with protecting and helping him," so he got involved with gangs.
"At the age of 17, Brock was sent to the ultimate place of abuse, the Central Utah Correctional Facility," the suit states.
The lawsuit accuses the prison warden and staff of "deliberate indifference to Brock’s serious and well-documented brain damage and mental illness."
Tucker was in and out of the prison's isolation room frequently during 2013. Punitive isolation "is recognized to be torture and known to cause insanity, and to cause emotional distress, depression, and crushing loneliness," according to the lawsuit.
When his body was found in his cell, corrections officials also found a note that read, “Send my love to my family and my ex’z! I’m better off gone since I’m already gone! Thanx for nothing!" the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit contends that keeping Tucker in isolation for extended periods of time and depriving him of "basic human needs imposed serious psychological pain and suffering and permanent psychological and physical injury on Brock."
A spokesman with the Utah Department of Corrections stated Tuesday that the department does not comment on litigation.
