Williams told detention officers and a nurse that he had broken his neck and couldn’t move, but he lay untreated on the cell floor for the next 10½ hours before being taken to the medical unit where he continued to not receive treatment and a head nurse told him to “quit f---- — faking,” according to the judge’s order and opinion.

Williams continued to complain that he couldn’t move or feel his legs for several days before eventually dying in a jail cell that Dowdell described as his “burial crypt.”

At issue in the case will be whether a jury believes evidence presented on behalf of Williams that indicates jail officials were deliberately indifferent to the medical care of inmates at the jail.

“From this evidence, a reasonable jury could find that Mr. Williams’s medical needs were obvious to any layperson,” Dowdell wrote. “They could also find that the medical unit-wide attitude of inhumanity and indifference shown to him, which resulted in the delay and denial of medical care in the face of his symptoms that were obviously indicative of a serious medical condition or medical emergency, amounted to deliberate indifference.”