WAGONER – Wagoner County residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of a sales tax rather than a property tax to pay off a $13 million out-of-court settlement in the death of a diabetic woman who died in the county jail.
In the Feb. 11 special election, 7,104 voters (92.91%) voted for the sales tax and 542 others voted against the proposition. The 7,646 votes tabulated in the election constituted 14.4% of the 53,099 registered voters in the county, according to the Wagoner County Election Board.
If the sales tax proposal had been rejected, the settlement would have been paid off with a property tax assessment collected over a 10-year period.
Angela Lynn Liggans, 41, was booked into the Wagoner County Jail on May 17, 2021, after her arrest on complaints of assault and battery on a police officer, domestic assault, and obstruction.
Liggans – who was “an insulin- dependent Type 1 diabetic” and required daily blood sugar monitoring and insulin injections – died in the jail 16 days later, on June 2, 2021. At various times during those 16 days Liggans reportedly displayed “signs of extreme confusion and even psychosis,” as well as weakness and fatigue and high blood pressure, and “continued to outwardly display bizarre and psychotic behavior…” Liggans’ mother, Sharon Dee Dalton of Tulsa, filed a civil rights lawsuit in Muskogee’s Eastern District federal court on April 27, 2023, alleging negligence, against Wagoner County Sheriff Chris Elliott, two of his deputies, a “medical assistant” who was hired by Elliott to serve as the jail’s “health administrator” despite her “lack of training and limited scope of practice,” and a family medical practitioner from a nearby town.
After entering into mediation, Dalton and the Wagoner County Board of Commissioners reached a $13.5 million outof- court settlement on Aug. 16, 2024, and the agreement was entered into the court record on Nov. 19, 2024.
The Association of County Commissioners of Oklahoma Self-Insured Group paid $483,156 from the county's $1 million maximum benefit, leaving county taxpayers on the hook for $13,016,843.
That debt will be retired with a county sales tax of one-fourth of a penny per dollar that goes into effect July 1 and will be levied for 15 years, “or until the debt has been satisfied in full, whichever occurs sooner.”
Reportedly the county will borrow the money from a bank and repay the loan with proceeds from the sales tax.
The lawsuit settlement provides that the post-judgment interest rate, which started Jan. 1, 2025, will be 4.96% for the first three years and increase to 6% annually afterward.
Wagoner County levies a sales tax of 0.013% (1.3 cents per dollar), which produced $855,469 in November and $1,009,998 in December. In addition, Wagoner County communities of Wagoner, Coweta, Okay, Porter, and Tullahassee all levy city sales taxes of 0.04% (4 cents per dollar), and the state sales tax is 0.045% (4.5 cents per dollar).
During a January interview with Tulsa TV Channel 8, Elliott said, “It's fallen squarely on my desk and I'll carry that load for the county; it is my responsibility to make sure that jail is running accordingly. We had some failures down there. Those people no longer work here,” he said.
The sheriff said his staff at the time, including the former jail administrator, failed to follow protocols. “He clearly failed to follow the medical protocols for medical staff. He clearly failed to follow my ‘fit for confinement’ protocols,” Elliot said.
When Liggans’ death occurred, “I had in this facility a medical doctor who was treating this patient and prescribing medication to that patient,” the sheriff said. “When I did my investigation, come to find out, she never came in and laid eyes on that patient and I had no idea that was going on.”
County officers can be removed from office Some Wagoner County residents contended Elliott was ultimately responsible for Liggans’ death, and they wanted him ousted from office.
Oklahoma has no provision for recall of public officials.
However, Title 22 of the State Statutes decrees that any appointed or elected county officer “may, in the manner provided in this article, be removed from office” for various reasons that include “habitual or willful neglect of duty” or “willful maladministration.” The statute also states that an elective county officer “may be removed or ousted from office for any act or acts of commission or omission or neglect…” A “complaint, petition, accusation or proceeding for removal or ouster from office” must be presented to a district attorney or to a grand jury.
Also in Title 22 is this section: “The board of county commissioners may, in the case of any county… officer, present such accusation and bring an action in the name of the county for the removal” of a county officer, “and the district court shall have exclusive jurisdiction thereof.”
Wagoner County District Attorney Jack Thorp told Southwest Ledger the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation was contacted to investigate Liggans’ death on the day it was discovered, and the medical examiner “took possession of the body.”
The OSBI conducted a thorough investigation and made no recommendation for criminal charges against anyone involved in the incident, Thorp said, although “there were some issues with the death which resulted in the lawsuit.”
For example, he said, “There’s some dispute over whether” Liggans “was deprived of her insulin or refused it” during her incarceration in the jail.
Dalton alleged in her lawsuit that when Liggans was being booked into the Wagoner County Jail, she “grabbed her medication bag” and “attempted to administer insulin to herself” but Wagoner County Sheriff’s detention officers “physically took the insulin” from her.
“It was the Sheriff’s Department’s policy that inside the jail,” those who have been arrested “cannot inject medications unless they are dispensed by the jail staff,” Thorp told the Ledger.
The district attorney also indicated that video footage Dalton cited in her lawsuit may have been adequate for a civil lawsuit but often was not sufficiently conclusive for a criminal case.