California Agrees to a $3.5 Million Settlement in a Prison Death Case
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will pay $3.5 million in a wrongful death case involving a woman beaten to death by her cellmate inside the CA Institution for Women in Chino, lawyers for the mother and teenage son said last Friday.
In a statement, the lawyers said “Corrections officers over several days witnessed the escalating conflicts between Shaylene Graves and her cellmate, who publicly threatened her life. Prison officials refused Graves’s multiple pleas to change cells.”
“Officers failed, for at least four hours, to respond to an escalating argument and loud banging sounds they admit they heard the night she was killed. Her lifeless body was then hanged by her cellmate to make it appear as if she’d committed suicide, according to court records,” added the lawyers.
