Settlement in Broward Prison Suicide

A $500,000 settlement has been reached in the 2006 jail suicide of an 18-year-old Miami woman who was locked in solitary confinement despite a history of mental illness.

Attorneys at the Florida Justice Institute said Wednesday the settlement will benefit the parents and estate of 18-year-old Aleshia Napier. The agreement came in a lawsuit filed in Miami federal court against the state Department of Corrections, health contractors and prison doctors.

Napier hung herself with a bedsheet on Oct. 31, 2006 at Broward Correctional Institution. The lawsuit said she was wrongly kept for weeks in a solitary cell with no treatment despite widespread knowledge among prison officials that she had tried suicide before and suffered mental problems.

Napier had been serving time for aggravated battery and fleeing law enforcement officers.