MONTICELLO, NY — Sullivan County has settled a civil rights lawsuit filed against it by the estate of Vincent Leone, a 31-year-old inmate who committed suicide at the Sullivan County Jail on October 22, 2011. The total amount of the settlement was $375,000.

Vincent Leone was placed in the Sullivan County Jail on May 30, 2011. Almost immediately upon being placed at the facility, he attempted suicide. During the entirety of his incarceration, he was on some level of suicide watch. While on a 15-minute suicide watch directed by a consulting jail psychiatrist, Vincent Leone committed suicide by draping a blanket over the front of his cell, fashioning a noose out of a sheet and shoe string, affixing it to a steel hook on the back wall of his cell, placing it around his neck, and asphyxiating himself by using the weight of his body.

Another inmate, Anthony Delia, had committed suicide in the same manner while in the medical unit using the same type of hook on June 15, 2011. Despite Delia’s suicide by asphyxiation using a steel hook located on the back wall of his cell in the medical unit, jail administration made the decision not to remove the steel hooks from the cells of inmates on suicide watch.