Jury awards $4 million in Virginia prison death case

“Have you ever had heartburn, man, real, real bad?” Boley told a good friend on the evening of April 16, 2019, according to the complaint filed by Boley’s estate. Phone records substantiate how Boley tried to describe the screaming pain in his chest that had forced him to the ground.

Inside Boley’s chest, a tear had begun to form. The wall of his aorta, the body’s main artery that brings blood away from the heart, had ruptured, spilling blood into his chest cavity.

Shown in 1989 after graduating high school, Robert Boley was close to release in 2019 when he was found dead in his cell at Deerfield Men’s Work Center.
Courtesy of James Boley

Fourteen hours later, Boley was found dead in his cell at Deerfield Men’s Work Center in Southampton, sitting up with his hands in a position of prayer, as deputies would later recall in court documents.

Last week, jurors in a civil trial found the prison’s private health care provider, Armor Correctional Healthcare, as well as the prison’s nurse and on-duty sergeant, liable in Boley’s death. Jurors awarded a record $4 million in damages to Boley’s two surviving brothers.

The verdict comes months after the state canceled its contract with Armor, and has said the Department of Corrections will take health care for prisoners “in-house.”

The award in the case is one of the largest of its kind in Virginia, which are often settled by defendants before reaching a jury trial. Most recently, a judge awarded a $3 million settlement to the estate of Jamycheal Mitchell, who died at Hampton Roads Regional Jail. That jail had also been served by a for-profit correctional health care company called Naphcare.

“I just feel like my brother got justice,” said James Boley, Robert’s younger brother. “My brother, I can’t get him back, but hopefully this case will help a lot of other guys that are in there. They can get the help that he didn’t get.”

At trial, the Boleys’ lawyer, Mark Krudys, described a systems breakdown that occurred as Boley’s condition worsened — from a disinterested Peck, who downplayed Boley’s chest pain, to her replacement, who did not even have a stethoscope with which to examine Boley’s heartbeat.

Krudys also alleged negligence by the prison doctor, Dr. Alvin Harris, who he said did not call an ambulance and instead prescribed an indigestion medication rather than escalate his care.

The jury did not find Harris liable, as they did with the initial on-duty nurse, and the sergeant on duty, Emmanuel Bynam, an employee for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Harris could not be reached for comment.

Harris was apathetic, Krudys alleged, despite classic symptoms of an aortic aneurysm, according to a contracted cardiovascular expert for the plaintiff, Dr. Rishi Kundi from the University of Maryland Medical System.

Kundi testified that a surgery to repair Boley’s aorta would have almost certainly saved his life, had he been allowed to receive care at a local hospital.

Robert Lee Boley outside of the Boley’s family home in the northside of Norfolk, Virginia, in 1989. Courtesy of James Boley.

“Mr. Boley would have more than likely survived had he arrived at the ED by even 2300 on the evening of April 16th — more than 14 hours after he started experiencing chest pain,” Kundi wrote.

Krudys believes the sum is the largest he’s seen come from a jury since a 2005 case, which awarded $2.5 million. It may be because of how close Boley was to release.

In 1999, Boley, who was from Norfolk, was sentenced to over 20 years in prison on multiple charges including robbery, use of a firearm, larceny and forgery of a public document.

After serving most of that time in a higher security facility, he’d been relocated to Deerfield Men’s Work Center, a facility with relaxed security protocols and in which prisoners work jobs. Boley worked as a prep cook, and had looked forward to getting work as a long-distance trucker on his release in a year, his brother James said.

“That was one of the underlying sadnesses of the case, that he was so close to getting out when this occurred,” Krudys said. “The jury strongly rebuked the idea that Robert Boley’s life, because he spent time in prison, wasn’t worth much.”

In October 2021, the Virginia Department of Corrections moved to cancel its contract with Armor Correctional Healthcare, the company that had a $90 million contract to staff Deerfield Work Center and several other facilities in Virginia.

At the time, VADOC Director Harold Clarke told the legislature that communication with Armor had fallen apart.

“The lack of communication and the activities of the vendor significantly jeopardize the ability of the department to ensure constitutionally adequate medical care is being provided as contractually required by the vendor and is unsustainable for any amount of time,” Clarke said in a letter to House and Senate budget leaders.

Carla Lemons, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections, declined to comment on the verdict, but said “Armor is not staffing any prisons or VADOC facilities in Virginia.”

Lemons declined to answer which care provider staffs the facility now.

Armor did not respond to requests for comment on the verdict. On Wednesday, lawyers for the company filed a motion with the court to reduce the $4 million settlement to $2.35 million, arguing that state law caps the amount that can be awarded for medical malpractice.

Lawyers for Boley’s estate responded that the $4 million verdict should be honored, with the difference between Armor’s portion and the award to come from Emmanuel Bynum, an employee of the DOC. Under that arrangement, the state would be liable for as much as $1.65 million in damages.

After more than a year entangled in the court system, James Boley said he’d “finally begun to exhale,” even if he won’t see his brother again.

“He did his time, he just never got a chance to come home,” Boley said. “That’s what’s sad.”