KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed in part by Kylr Yust and five other inmates against the Jackson County Detention Center.
The lawsuit was filed by Jerry Bausby and included plaintiffs Yust, Michael E. Cain, Gerald Weilder, Joseph Wyatt and Brian K. Moyer.
Yust is accused of burning Jessica Runions’s car. She disappeared in September 2016. Friends say she was last seen leaving a party with Yust. Her remains were later found in Cass County by a mushroom hunter. A second set of remains was found nearby. They were later identified as Kara Kopetsky, a woman who had gone missing in 2007.
Bausby filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and the five other inmates, including Yust.
The lawsuit claimed that the detention center failed to provide the inmates with clean sheets for a period of at least six months and did not properly address the matter when inmates tried filing complaints.
Below is a portion of the lawsuit penned by Bausby:
“For the last 6 months we have been forced (no other choice) to sleep on the same bedding, sheets & blanket. I along with others have put in NUMEROUS request and complaints for clean sheets only to be told finally recently that the facility has to “ORDER” them… My sheets were TAN back when I received them in March, which would originally have been “white,” but now they are DARK BROWN and wish that I could send a non-exaggerated picture along with this complaint.”
The suit went on to say the detention center was also neglecting to supply inmates with hygienic goods such as toothpaste, even though in some cases, inmates’ accounts would still be charged for the products.
Bausby wrote that he had been out of toothpaste for two months, and had filed requests for a new tube. He said he received no response and no toothpaste even though he claimed he had already been charged for one.
He wrote that he was not the only inmate having this experience.
“Most of us inmates have had to either ask others after this for ‘A DAB OF TOOTHPASTE,’ or just went ahead and PURCHASED a REAL, VISIBLE Hygiene kit from their expensive, overpriced commissary,” Bausby wrote.
In a court order, United States District Judge Gary A. Fenner severed and dismissed everyone but Bausby from the suit since only he submitted a copy of his inmate account statement.
Fenner also said a joinder was not appropriate in this case because each inmate needed to file individual lawsuits separate from each other, each one paying the $350 filing fee.
The judge reviewed the lawsuit and concluded that Bausby would need to file a suspending amended complaint if he wished to continue pursuing the matter since there were issues with the original filing.
Those issues included the fact that Bausby could not sue the Jackson County Detention Center itself since it is not a “cognizable legal entity or person subject to suit.”
In addition, Fenner said Bausby needed to provide a “custom or policy of Jackson County, Missouri, that has violated his constitutional rights,” rather than just explaining the circumstances and conditions in the jail.
Read the full judge’s order below:
