Attorneys have one year to prepare for trial

PEORIA — Attorneys in the Austin L. Wells lawsuit against Bureau County will have one year to complete the discovery phase of the trial.

Chicago attorney Janine Hoft, representing the Wells’ plaintiffs, and Northbrook attorney George Casson, representing the defendants, appeared Sept. 19 in the U.S. District Court in Peoria before Judge Michael Mihm.

Wells was the 17-year-old Dover teen who hung himself in the Bureau County Jail in June 2007. Wells had been dead for seven or eight hours when found by jail staff at 6:50 a.m. June 9, 2007, according to Bureau County Coroner Janice Wamhoff. A coroner’s jury determined Wells’ death to be a suicide.

Wells had been placed in the county jail five days earlier, on June 4, 2007, after being arrested for the Class A misdemeanor of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, specifically for keeping his 16-year-old girlfriend out past curfew.

One year later, on June 4, 2008, Wells’ father, Jerry Wells, his mother, Mindy Davis, and the estate of Austin Wells filed the civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit against the defendants, asking for a jury trial and an unspecified amount of monetary damages.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the county of Bureau, Bureau County Sheriff John Thompson, and correctional officers Sherry Keefer and Chris Spiegel.

Among the information to be included in the discovery plan will be the facts, circumstances and documentation of Austin Well’s life prior to his detention in the Bureau County Jail; his medical and mental health history and related records; and his arrest, screening and detention in the county jail. Also included will be information on the physical structure of the county jail and the sheriff department’s policies and procedures for screening, supervising, observing and maintaining jail detainees.

The discovery phase of the trial shall be cut off by Aug. 1, 2009.