“I’ve been asked to review medical malpractice cases usually by hospitals where a diagnosis of APL was delayed and the patient ended up dying, and when I’ve done so, I’ve always told the hospital they need to settle,” he said.

“Of course, I have no access to the underlying interaction with the prison medical staff outside of what’s in your story,” he said. “I guess that’s the question: Was he sick and not telling anybody, or was he sick in a way that further investigations should have been warranted?”

In all three recent deaths at the jail, there have been indications that jail staffers failed to act on serious health problems. An inmate told Clayton police that about an hour before Larry “Jay” Reavis was discovered facedown on his cell floor on Jan. 18, a guard shrugged off a report that Reavis was having a seizure, saying, “I don’t know about that.” The medical examiner ruled Reavis died from alcohol abuse.