A Reno jury recently awarded over $4 million in damages to a former inmate at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center and the Stewart Conservation Camp in Carson City, Nicolai Mork, who they found was ignored when he asked for help for a dental infection and a full body rash he was suffering from.
The June 20th verdict determined a prison doctor and nurse violated his Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment, with most of the damage coming from the nurse’s conduct.
Mork had pleaded with the nurse Kathy Henderson to allow him to see a dentist as the inside of his mouth was rotting, which he says she ignored for months. Both she and the doctor, Mike Naughton, have stopped working for the prison system.
Mork who had been serving a four-year sentence on a weapons charge during the pandemic was able to have his teeth pulled and rebuild his mouth only after he got released from prison.
In a press release from yesterday, the law firm Holland, Holland Edwards and Grossman indicated “Mr. Mork hopes that this verdict will reach the Department of Corrections decision makers and cause a change in how medical care is handled for prisoners in Nevada. Just last year, Jeremy Bean, a NDOC Warden issued a memo acknowledging that DOC facilities unconstitutionally withhold medical care and other times provide constitutionally inadequate care. The memo specifically acknowledges that this is cruel and unusual punishment, prohibited by the 8th Amendment.”
“Seeing the defendants brought back the pain and powerlessness. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to control my emotions and would lose the ability to speak. I brought a piece of my mom’s ashes to the trial with me and held it in my pocket for strength,” Mork said.
“When the jury came back with the verdict, I wept. I had stopped believing it was possible for me to get any kind of justice. Then, suddenly, there was this abundant act of justice for me. I experienced a profound feeling of re-enfranchisement. The legal system could work for me. A jury could sympathize with me. I could leave the bitterness of my past behind.”
