Kevil Wingo, a pretrial detainee at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center, was arrested in September 2019 for cocaine possession. Shortly after booking, he complained of abdominal pain, sweating, nausea, and vomiting. He told a deputy he had an ulcer, but medical staff diagnosed him as suffering from drug withdrawal or detoxification. Despite Wingo's repeated demands to be taken to a hospital and his increasing distress, the deputies deferred to the nursing staff's assessment that he was medically stable and merely detoxing. Wingo was eventually moved to a padded isolation cell where he was found unresponsive and later died. An autopsy revealed the cause of death was complications from a perforated gastric ulcer with peritonitis. Wingo's estate sued the sheriff's deputies under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for deliberate indifference and sued one deputy, Paul Wilkerson, under state tort law for negligence. The district court granted summary judgment for all defendants, and the estate appealed.
The Eleventh Circuit addressed two primary issues. First, regarding the deliberate indifference claim against Major Harris, Lieutenant Gordon, and Deputy Marshall, the court applied the standard that a nonmedical officer cannot be held liable if they reasonably rely on the opinion of a medical professional. The court noted that the nurses consistently assured the deputies that Wingo was detoxing and medically fine. The court rejected the argument that the diagnosis was obviously wrong to a layperson, explaining that a perforated ulcer presents diffuse symptoms like nausea and abdominal discomfort that are not easily distinguishable from withdrawal symptoms by someone without medical training. The court cited precedent from the Eighth, Tenth, Seventh, Sixth, and Third Circuits supporting the principle that prison officials may generally rely on the advice of medical personnel. Second, regarding Deputy Wilkerson, the court focused on the element of causation. The plaintiff's expert, Dr. Myers, testified that while survivability decreases over time for a ruptured ulcer, he could not state with any degree of medical certainty whether Wingo could have been saved if treated at the specific time he came under Wilkerson's watch. The court held that without expert testimony establishing causation with medical certainty, the plaintiff could not meet the burden for either the federal deliberate indifference claim or the state negligence claim.
The decision reinforces the protection for nonmedical correctional officers who defer to medical staff, provided that reliance is reasonable. It clarifies that officers are not expected to diagnose complex medical conditions like perforated ulcers when presented with symptoms that overlap with drug withdrawal. For future litigation, the ruling emphasizes the critical importance of expert testimony in establishing causation; without a medical expert able to state with certainty that earlier intervention would have prevented death, summary judgment is likely to be granted against individual officers.