New in The Appeal: He Was Arrested for Unpaid Court Fees. He Was Dead 48 Hours Later.

Todd Sidesinger was taken to Pennsylvania’s York County Prison for unpaid fees. His family says the jail’s medical neglect led to his death just two days later.

Three days after Todd Sidesinger was released from the hospital for heart failure in February 2024, he was taken to jail for unpaid court costs and fees, totaling about $1,500. Within 48 hours, he would be dead.

Sidesinger wore a prescribed defibrillator vest that delivers an electrical shock when it detects a life-threatening heart rhythm. The vest has to be charged approximately once every 24 hours. But York County Prison’s (YCP) medical staff never charged his vest, according to a wrongful death suit filed by his sister, Vicki Sidesinger, against PrimeCare, the jail’s for-profit medical provider, several of its employees, York County, the warden, and others.

The defendants have denied all wrongdoing. The County, as well as one of the nurses named in the complaint, have asked the Court to dismiss the case, which remains pending. PrimeCare and York County did not respond to a request for comment.

Sidesinger’s death shines a light on a grim reality in jails across the United States. Unaware of court debts—or unable to pay them—thousands of people are incarcerated in dangerous jails where their health, safety, and lives are at risk.

In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a person can only be incarcerated for unpaid court costs if they have “willfully refused to pay.” But most states, including Pennsylvania, do not require a hearing to determine why payments were not made, according to the National Center for Access to Justice.

Courts can impose fees on people in the adult and juvenile legal systems for anything from appointed counsel to supervision and electronic monitoring to drug testing—and even their own incarceration (typically known as “pay-to-stay” fees).

On February 14, 2024, Sidesinger was hospitalized with heart failure. Doctors inserted two stents in his heart and released him the next day. Cellitti-Sidesinger picked him up from the hospital. The doctors were optimistic about his prognosis, she said.

Three days later, on February 18, the police arrested Sidesinger and booked him into York County Prison (YCP).

The complaint says that during his intake at the jail, a PrimeCare employee recorded that Sidesinger was wearing a “heart monitor” that would “need charged (sic) when running low.” The next day, Sidesinger submitted a medical request, stating that he was experiencing chest pain and a toothache, with pain that “radiates to his entire jaw,” according to the complaint.

An EKG showed Sidesinger was experiencing a type of irregular heartbeat called Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVCs), but the nurse practitioner concluded that the results were normal, according to the complaint. She gave him acetaminophen for his toothache and sent him back to his cell.

The complaint says that in the coroner’s subsequent report on the case, she wrote that PVCs “can be life-threatening, especially if the patient is having chest pains as this decedent was having at the time.”

The next morning, at about 5:25 am, Sidesinger returned to the medical unit and told the nurse on duty that he was experiencing chest pain on his left side and a toothache, according to the complaint. Like the first nurse, she sent him back to his cell. (This same nurse has been named in several other lawsuits alleging medical neglect; she has told The Appeal she is no longer working at the jail.)

She wrote in her notes that Sidesinger had a “Cardiac Monitor” that needed to be charged, but one was not available. from home that needs to be charged,” she wrote in her notes, according to the complaint. “No charger available.”

Ten minutes later, he was found unconscious on the floor of his cell. He was taken to the hospital and declared dead.

The last nurse who saw him wrote in his chart, after his death, that he “returned to his location in stable condition.”

A family member, who worked at the hospital, called Vicki to tell her that Sidesinger had died. When they called the hospital for more information, the staff directed them to contact the jail. Up until that point, they had no idea he had been incarcerated.

“I just fell apart,” Vicki said. “I just couldn’t believe that it happened.”

Read the full story at theappeal.org.