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DUCHESNE — Jurors began hearing testimony Thursday in a criminal case against a nurse accused of causing the death of a 21-year-old jail inmate by not properly treating the woman for dehydration five years ago.
Jana Clyde, 54, who is still working as a nurse at the Duchesne County Jail, was charged in September 2017 with negligent homicide, a class A misdemeanor.
Madison Jensen, the woman who died, was staying at her parent's home while attempting to get away from her drug habits, but family friction made it hard for her to stay at home and her father called the sheriff's office for assistance. Jensen willingly went to jail on Nov. 27, 2016, and died four days later, on Dec. 1, assistant attorney general B. Namba told the jury Thursday.
Namba explained in his opening arguments that Clyde was the only full-time medical staff at the jail. The hospital had a contract with a physician and a physician assistant who would help and give diagnoses and Clyde communicated with them. He said Clyde never contacted them about Jensen and did not take other measures she was trained to take.
"The only person who's trained to make the proper observations within the jail is the defendant," Namba said.
The prosecutor said a doctor from the medical examiner's office will testify during the trial that Jensen died from a cardiac arrhythmia, which was a consequence of dehydration due to symptoms of withdrawal that included excessive vomiting. Namba said administering saline fluids could have saved her, but water and other drinks would not be enough.
The charge against Clyde was dismissed at a preliminary hearing in 2018 after a judge decided there was not enough evidence for a jury to consider. But after an appeal by the Utah Attorney General's Office, the Utah Court of Appeals reinstated the case in 2019.
The opinion from the appellate court said Clyde's "near complete indifference" toward Jensen "grossly deviated from the standard of care for treating severe dehydration, especially when the result of a failure to treat is death."
Defense attorney Loni Deland said in his opening arguments that his client had the same training as other staff at the jail, and because Clyde is only there 40 hours in a week, other jail staff were trained to report to the doctor and none of them had taken those steps either. He also said multiple officers made observations about Jensen's health, but "very little" of those observations were passed along to Clyde.
"She had limited knowledge, others had the same knowledge, and every one of them had the responsibility and the obligation," Deland said.
He said for Clyde to be found guilty, prosecutors will have to prove she was so negligent she caused the woman's death by her own actions, not others on the staff or from practices at the jail.
