An inmate at High Desert State Prison has sued the Nevada Department of Corrections and its medical staff, accusing them of delaying a medical procedure that resulted in him becoming blind in one eye and losing the majority of his vision in the other.
The complaint filed in District Court Monday alleges that the denial of care and deliberate indifference by prison staff violated inmate Brian Daugherty’s 8th Amendments rights, which protect against cruel and unusual punishment.
“He must press his face against a television screen to see it at all,” the lawsuit states. “He cannot read a book. He is afraid of falling. He requires ADA accommodations — lower floor, no stairs, lower bunk — to move safely through a prison, and at one point was housed in the infirmary purely for his own safety. He endured nearly four years of bleeding eyes, headaches, dizziness, and the particular anguish of feeling his eyesight disappear month by month while he wrote letter after letter that no one answered.”
The department declined to comment, citing the active status of the litigation.
Daugherty was initially booked into High Desert State Prison — located in Indian Springs, about 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas — in August 2021, prison records showed. Daugherty was adjudicated guilty and received a sentence of five to 20 years in prison, as part of an Alford plea on two counts of child sex crimes in 2021, court records show.
The Metropolitan Police Department had initially arrested Daugherty on Jan. 16, 2021, on 21 charges, including six counts of sexual assault against a child under the age of 14 and nine counts of lewdness with a child under 14, the arrest report stated. The police reports stated that victims told investigators that the abuse took place between 2012 and 2020.
According to the legal complaint, Daugherty submitted his first request for medical care for his eyes in May 2022, reporting there was bleeding in the left eye and blurriness in the right, resulting in NDOC placing him on an eye clinic waiting list.
The lawsuit said Daugherty continued to submit formal requests for care throughout the year until he received an appointment in November 2022, when an optometrist documented the deterioration of his vision and made an “immediate referral to (a) retinal specialist.” However, despite a physician indicating in December 2022 that surgery was to be scheduled “expeditiously,” it did not occur until April 2026, the complaint said.
Meanwhile, as Daugherty waited for surgery, he filed numerous grievances about his “undelivered eye surgery,” which went unanswered, and requests for care, the complaint said. The lawsuit stated that Frank Dreesen, an associate warden at High Desert State Prison, denied another grievance in September 2024, calling it “duplicate” and an “abuse of inmate grievance procedure,” despite knowing of Daugherty’s medical needs.
“His conduct was not a medical judgment; it was an administrative act taken with actual knowledge that a prisoner in his custody was going blind waiting for a surgery that NDOC had already approved,” the lawsuit stated. “He was aware of and responsible for assuring that Plaintiff’s grievances were timely addressed and responded to, but chose not to address them.”
Daugherty’s attorney, Adam Breeden, also noted in the complaint that High Desert State Prison Warden Jeremy Bean issued a memo to medical providers on Aug. 16, 2024, that said, “There have been instances of medical care being neglected for offenders in our care. This is a serious violation of their rights under the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, including the denial of necessary medical care.”
“The lawsuit filed on behalf of Mr. Daugherty highlights the horrible, unconstitutional medical services the State of Nevada — despite numerous successful lawsuits against them — continues to provide incarcerated persons,” Breeden told the Review-Journal. “As a civil rights attorney, I am hopeful the public is outraged by this situation and that real change will occur at the Nevada Department of Corrections.”
The lawsuit seeks more than $100,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.
Contact Devan Patel at dpatel@reviewjournal.com
