Jury awards $3 million in Jacksonville prison death case

A Springfield jury put a $3 million price tag on the medical failures alleged inside Jacksonville Correctional Center, awarding damages to the family of Eugene Varner Jr. after the 43-year-old Chicago man died while in state custody.

The verdict lands hard in Morgan County because Jacksonville Correctional Center is one of the area’s most visible state institutions. For residents, prison staff, attorneys and anyone watching public health inside corrections, the case raises the same question that shadows every serious jail or prison death: were warning signs recognized in time, and did the people responsible follow the right treatment protocol?

Catrina Larkin, acting as independent administrator of Varner’s estate, filed the federal civil case on January 24, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois. The defendants were Wexford Health Sources Inc. and Dr. Thomas Baker. After a weeklong trial in Springfield, jurors returned the verdict on April 20, 2026, following about 2.5 hours of deliberation.

Court records say Varner died on March 7, 2021, from a pulmonary embolism caused by deep vein thrombosis. He had tested positive for COVID-19 on December 4, 2020. A court filing says Baker ordered Varner sent to Passavant Hospital’s emergency room on December 7, 2020, after his oxygen saturation fell to 86% and his heart rate was elevated.

The plaintiff argued that Varner’s later shortness of breath on March 1, 2021, along with pain, a swollen left foot, a history of DVT and his recent COVID infection, should have pointed to a pulmonary embolism. The case also grew out of a separate injury, a slip on a wet floor that hurt Varner’s knee, before the swelling and clotting concerns intensified.

Jurors found Wexford and Baker liable. The state was not a defendant in the case. Illinois Times reporting said Peoria civil rights attorney Louis Meyer represented the family, while the jury’s decision was framed by the family’s account of the pain of losing their son.

The verdict also arrives against a wider backdrop of criticism of prison health care in Illinois. In January 2024, the Associated Press reported that the state awarded Wexford a five-year prison medical contract worth $1.956 billion, with a five-year renewal worth $2.201 billion, even though Wexford’s bid was $673 million higher than VitalCore Health Strategies’ offer. A federal panel appointed by a judge concluded in 2015 that Illinois prison health care was unable to meet minimal constitutional standards, a finding that still hangs over cases like Varner’s.