A civil trial began Tuesday in federal court to determine whether the city should be held liable for the death of a man held inside a Philadelphia jail more than two years ago.
Louis Jung Jr., a 50-year-old inmate at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, died Nov. 6, 2023, of complications from diabetes.
Attorneys representing the family told jurors that, on the day before his death, Jung was found lying in the doorway of his cell, crying out for medical attention. Instead of providing him access to health care, correctional staff ordered two other incarcerated men to drag him back in and closed the door, they added.
“If you keep someone in your custody, you have to care for them,” Nia Holston, a lawyer with the Abolitionist Law Center, said in her opening statement. “Louis Jung’s death was not inevitable.”
Holston argued that Jung’s death could have been prevented if correctional officers had not failed in following the Philadelphia Department of Prisons' policies and ignored his clear signs of diabetic ketoacidosis. Instead, he suffered amid a “culture of indifference” within the jail system, she said.
Even though Jung, a Type 1 diabetic who was diagnosed at a young age, had been repeatedly hospitalized for his condition while incarcerated, he did not receive any insulin or glucose checks in the final 6 days of his life, the ALC alleged in the initial lawsuit.
Emily Hoff, an attorney for the city, asked the jury to keep an “open mind” and consider what the correctional staff knew at the time, without the benefit of hindsight. Officers assigned to Jung’s cell block, she said, relied on the medical expertise of contracted nurses at the jail.
The first witness called to the stand, in what is expected to be a multi-day trial, was Evelyn Tyson, Jung’s ex-wife. Tyson and Jung divorced in 2008 following a 12-year marriage, but they remained friends and spent holidays together, she testified.
“I don’t even live anymore. I’m just existing,” Tyson said, when asked about the impact of Jung’s death. “I feel lost.”
During an emotional exchange, ALC Legal Director Bret Grote asked Tyson about the relationship between Jung and their first-born son, 31-year-old Louis Jung III. Tyson provides full-time care for the younger Jung, who was born with cerebral palsy. He was shocked by Jung’s death and has yet to recover, Tyson said.
“He throws temper tantrums to the point that he hurts himself,” she explained. “He sits and talks to his father’s picture.”
The couple’s two other adult sons, Jacob and James, were seated Tuesday morning at a desk alongside ALC attorneys, who filed the lawsuit on their behalf in October 2024.
In addition to the city and PDP, an amended complaint filed last year names former Philadelphia Prisons Commissioner Blanche Carney, YesCare (PDP’s medical services contractor), YesCare’s medical director at CFCF, a nurse practitioner, two nurses and two correctional officers.
Jung was arrested in December 2021 and charged with robbery, though that case remained unresolved at the time of his death.
In 2023, he spent several months at Norristown State Psychiatric Hospital to determine whether he was competent to stand trial. Jung was transferred back to CFCF on Oct. 27 of that year, ahead of a scheduled court hearing.
At intake, a nurse measured his glucose level at 542, though he was not taken to the infirmary or an outside medical center, ALC attorneys stated. Holston told the jury a normal blood sugar range is 70 to 110.
During the 10-day period between when Jung was discharged from Norristown and died, his diabetes was “catastrophically mismanaged," with sporadic insulin and glucose checks, the family’s legal team alleged in a pretrial memo.
