How much money would it take for you to agree to sleep on a wet matress for 59 days? The mattress keeps getting wet over the 59 days, so it gets a little moldy and a little smelly. But would you do it for $295,000?
A Wisconsin prisoner was just awarded $295,000 by a jury for that exact thing. Reggie Townsend is in prison with a 23-year sentence for killing an 11-year-old girl when firing a gun throughout up a neighborhood one night.
Townsend was involved in a 2004 riot at a Wisconsin prison. Everyone involved was put into segregation. Townsend was forced to sleep on a mattress on a floor next to a shower, which apparently caused the mattress to get wet and eventually moldy. He was in segregation for 59 days.
The prisoner complained about the mattress to no avail. And so a federal jury in Madison awarded Townsend $295,000 in punitive damages against the state.
I don’t think it was right to force this prisoner to sleep on that nasty mattress. But almost $300,000 for that? That’s $5,000 for each night he slept on the mattress. Where do I sign up?
Sign me up too!
They should have forced him to give the money to the family of the 11 year old girl or to reimbursed the state for the expense of supporting him.
If the wetness is water and not urine, then yes.
Indeed, I would do it for just $100k. Maybe even $50k.
These stories are discouraging. The juries are made of regular people. Am I surrounded by people that think so weird?
I would have awarded him like $1. Or $0…since the riot was the true reason for his condition.
My question is Why are they placing mattresses in the shower area to begin with… The dude should have picked up his mattress and moved it out of the way of the water if possible so it would dry out. You can not tell me the whole area the mattress sat was where there would be water…. Did they guy get sick??? That amount of money being awarded to a prisoner is uncalled for. What was this jury thinking?