Cook County Jail Forgot About Inmate, Kept Him Months Past Release Date: Suit
(CBS) – He served his time -- and then some.
Now, a former Cook County jail inmate is suing for being held in jail months too long.
CBS 2's Roseanne Tellez reports.
You count your days in the Cook County Jail. So when his release date rolled around, Milan James Brown, jailed for a probation violation on a domestic battery charge, was feeling good.
Until no one showed up to release him.
"If you do your time, you do your time. You're supposed to be freed that particular day," Brown says.
No one came. He waited, and waited.
"I told them I was past my out date," he says.
He finally a legal petition on his own. He got court dates, but Brown says staff said they knew nothing about it.
"It's not so much you locked someone up and threw away the key. You locked someone up and lost the key. It's a disaster," says Brown's attorney, Alexander Loftus.
And according to Brown's attorney, it's also a common problem.
"They keep on getting sued, they keep on getting media attention, they keep on paying settlements, and they keep on doing it," Loftus says.
Brown filed suit in Federal Court this week seeking $100,000 in damages citing false imprisonment and jail conditions, including infestations of rats, roaches and bedbugs.
"They were in there chewing me alive," Brown says.
The Cook County Sheriff's Department says it plans to fight the lawsuit.
"Mr. Brown has a complicated criminal history, and there were multiple court orders," a spokesperson said in a prepared statement. "We will strongly defend the actions of the sheriff's office in this litigation."