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A federal jury in Milwaukee has awarded $1 million in damages to the family of a man who died in the Racine County Jail, after agreeing officials there acted with "deliberate indifference" to the inmate's health needs.

Kendal "Sarge" Leonard, 57, died of a heart attack at the jail in 2007 while serving a 20-day sentence. According to the 2009 civil rights lawsuit brought by his widow, he told jail staff that he was on several medications for heart trouble, and that he'd had stents implanted just four months earlier.

But because of overcrowding at the time, the suit contended, medical staff never properly screened Leonard and never put in place the orders that he be given a daily aspirin. On Aug. 27, 2007, he complained of severe, prolonged chest pains. But his requests for emergency medical treatment were ignored, according to the lawsuit, and he died Sept. 1, 2007.

"It was our contention that simple daily aspirin would have prevented the clot that caused the heart attack," said James End, one of the attorneys for Leonard's estate.

A deputy at the jail recorded that Leonard had been given his heart medication at 6 a.m. that day - two hours after he'd been pronounced dead at a Racine hospital, according to the lawsuit.

The verdicts, returned after a four-day trial, were against Racine County, former Sheriff Robert D. Carlson and Andrew Ellenberger, a corrections deputy who was working the morning Leonard complained of the severe chest pains.

Defense counsel Jacob Sosnay declined to comment Monday, citing ongoing litigation.

The jury award, $630,000 in compensatory damages and $370,000 in punitive damages, does not include attorney fees, which the First, Albrecht & Blondis law firm will receive in a separate assessment against the defendants.