The complaint, brought on behalf of Sephiran Roberts, now 39, also accuses jail staff of blocking his attorney from seeing him and failing to preserve video footage of his treatment. It seeks compensation for physical and psychological injuries as well as punitive damages, arguing that staff showed blatant disregard for his constitutional rights.

"Instead of providing mental health care, they just restrained and secluded this guy for many hours a day," said David Boyer, managing attorney for Disability Rights Oregon, which is representing Roberts along with his other lawyers.

Josephine County legal counsel Wally Hicks said county officials would not comment on pending litigation.

Roberts was booked into the Josephine County Jail on Nov. 13, 2024, in what his lawyers describe as a full psychiatric crisis — his second detention in five days. According to the lawsuit, jail staff saw him speaking incoherently, making suicidal statements, harming himself and struggling to control his behavior. He was being held on burglary and theft allegations; police said he stole a gun from a car and tried to break into a non-residential property and a residence in Grants Pass. He had a Eugene address at the time.

Over the following weeks, deputies repeatedly placed Roberts in a device known as the "Wrap," a mummy-style restraint that secures a person from shoulders to feet with straps and buckles. The manufacturer's 22-page manual describes it as a temporary system for emergency stabilization and explicitly warns against using it on people experiencing emotional distress, intoxication or a medical emergency. Deputies sometimes also secured him in a restraint chair or to a cart, the suit says, leaving him entirely dependent on staff for food, hygiene and medical care.

The lawsuit contends the jail resorted to restraints because it lacked even minimal mental health care. It alleges that as deputies restrained Roberts, they sometimes used stun guns on him and struck him with closed fists and kicks.

On Dec. 7, 2024, Roberts was placed in the restraint device at about 4:10 a.m. and remained bound for more than 12 hours, until 4:45 p.m., according to the complaint. A deputy reportedly refused to remove the restraint because of Roberts' "yelling, hostility and lack of cooperation," with officers also citing concerns that he might grab staff or equipment or spit.

The prolonged restraint left Roberts with injuries to his wrists and knees, the suit says. A forensic evaluator who observed him on Dec. 16, 2024, documented sores around his wrists and arms, swollen hands and poor hygiene. A report 11 days later concluded that Roberts lacked mental competency and needed hospital-level care and restoration treatment. He was transferred to the Oregon State Hospital in January 2025.

Roberts, who now lives in Colorado with family, pleaded guilty in May 2025 to attempted burglary and first-degree theft and was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years of probation, according to court records.

The lawsuit argues that the county had already been warned about deficiencies in its jail's mental health services through a separate federal case stemming from the 2018 death of Janelle Marie Butterfield, a 34-year-old with a documented history of schizophrenia who died by suicide in the jail. Butterfield was booked on July 27, 2018, during a severe mental breakdown, accused of failing to appear in court on misdemeanor charges. She was placed in a segregation cell upon arrival and spent 40 days there before she was found dead on Sept. 5, 2018. Her family's lawyers said that despite her well-documented severe mental illness, she never saw a nurse, physician's assistant, nurse practitioner or doctor while in custody.

Butterfield's estate reached an undisclosed settlement with the jail's former medical provider, Wellpath LLC, but the settlement was not paid in full and Wellpath filed for bankruptcy, putting those claims on hold, according to court documents. A federal trial against the county in the Butterfield case is set for Feb. 1 in federal court in Eugene.

The Roberts lawsuit adds to mounting scrutiny of how Oregon jails handle people in psychiatric crisis, and it raises questions about whether Josephine County has acted on the warnings from the Butterfield case. For local residents, the case underscores the stakes of relying on restraint and isolation in places that lack adequate mental health staffing — practices that disability advocates say can deepen trauma and violate civil rights.