Judge dismisses lawsuit from protester who claimed she was denied medication in jail
SEATTLE – A federal judge has dismissed a civil rights lawsuit filed by a former Seattle woman arrested during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests on Capitol Hill, finding she refused to cooperate with defense attorneys and violated a court order by rebuffing an independent mental exam.
Samantha Six, now a Denver resident, sued the Seattle Police Department, the two officers who arrested her, and King County Jail officials, alleging authorities mistreated her during her arrest and ignored her repeated requests for medication needed to control epileptic seizures.
At the time the lawsuit was filed in May 2021, Six’s attorneys called the actions of police officers and county jail officials “unreasonable and excessive,” and asked for unspecified damages for the violation of her civil rights. According to documents filed in the case, those lawyers withdrew their representation because of a “breakdown in communication with Ms. Six.”
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik dismissed Six’s lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled, overruling a report by federal Magistrate Judge Richard Creatura, who had ruled the case should be dismissed but recommended that Six be given the option of refiling the action.
“Plaintiff has made it clear that she will not prosecute her action in good faith and has willfully disobeyed this Court’s order,” Creatura wrote last month. Not only would Six not submit to a mental exam, she also declined to give a sworn deposition.
Indeed, in response to an October 2022 email from an attorney for the two officers who arrested Six, advising her of the city’s intention to move to dismiss her claims, she wrote: “Call it what you need to be at peace with yourself,” followed by a middle-finger emoji.
In an interview Thursday from Denver, Six said: “Cops are cops.”
In a lengthy email to defense attorneys in August 2022, shortly after Six’s attorneys had withdrawn from the case, Six explained that she refused to travel to Seattle for health and personal reasons.
Her July 25, 2020, arrest on Capitol Hill was captured on bystander video and the officers’ body-worn cameras, and it was widely distributed on social media, resulting in a number of complaints to the city’s police watchdog agency, the Office of Police Accountability.
The agency’s investigation of Six’s arrest cleared of wrongdoing the four involved officers, including Scott Luckie and Michael Eastman, who were named in the lawsuit.
The agency’s investigators found that the riot-gear-clad officers acted lawfully and properly while arresting Six and her then-husband for allegedly impeding police efforts to disperse an unruly crowd. The investigation also stated Six repeatedly swore and verbally abused officers and was “physically resisting” them during her arrest, but “none of the officers were deliberately indifferent to (her) medical conditions” even though they initially failed to recognize she’d fallen unconscious at one point.
Six claimed she lost consciousness after police pulled her to the ground, then handcuffed her, dragged her across a sidewalk and held her down.
She claimed that she begged police for anti-seizure medication from her backpack, which officers confiscated when they arrested her. Six said the backpack and its contents were never returned.
The lawsuit contends that after being booked into jail, Six was offered a used face mask stained with makeup, and at one point had a “spit hood” put over her head before jail officers placed her in an isolation cell typically reserved for people with mental health issues.