Family of man who overdosed in N.J. prison alleges ‘pervasive’ drug smuggling behind bars

The family of a man who fatally overdosed in East Jersey State Prison has sued the state for wrongful death, saying officials “routinely turn a blind eye” to drug smuggling behind bars and thereby create dangerous living conditions for people who struggle with addiction.

Michael Cassella, 40, of Howell, died of acute fentanyl toxicity on Aug. 18, 2022, at the state prison in Rahway, according to a lawsuit filed last week in state Superior Court in Union County.

Cassella had a history of drug addiction and should have been monitored accordingly, attorney Brooke M. Barnett wrote in the complaint.

Despite the state Department of Corrections’ zero-tolerance policy for the possession, sale, or use of drugs and alcohol, East Jersey State Prison tolerates “a pervasive and systemic pattern and practice” of substance smuggling by correctional officers and incarcerated people, as well as grossly inadequate medical treatment provided by deliberately indifferent staff, Barnett wrote.

Cassella was dead for “awhile” by the time an officer found him unresponsive in his cell, she added. His aunt called the prison several times about him when he failed to contact her, but prison officials didn’t notify her of his death until days afterward, the lawsuit says.

“The serious medical needs of inmates, including Mr. Cassella, are given cursory attention, when not entirely ignored, and when acknowledged at all, treated with slipshod, hasty, inefficacious, rubber-stamp patch-jobs, designed to quiet inmate complaints, rather than treat the medical needs of human beings,” Barnett wrote.

The complaint, filed by Cassella’s aunt, Donna McNichol of Freehold, names Department of Corrections Commissioner Victoria Kuhn as a defendant, along with the department, the prison, and unnamed correctional officers and prison medical staff.

It accuses them of failure to protect, state-created danger, negligence, and wrongful death.

“Heroin and fentanyl are clearly infiltrating the prisons,” Barnett told the New Jersey Monitor. “They have a duty to protect these people. I’m not saying that it’s got to be the Hilton Hotel, but you expect these correctional officers and the medical departments in there to do what they’re supposed to do. If we don’t file these lawsuits, everything stays behind the four walls and nothing will be exposed. I look forward to getting some answers.”

Daniel Sperrazza, a Department of Corrections spokesman, said he could not comment on pending litigation.

But he said correctional agencies nationally, including in New Jersey, have seen “a substantial increase in the prevalence and illicit use of synthetic drugs entering facilities disguised in regular mail.”

“This has contributed to the rising number of assaults on staff and threatening the safety of all persons within the correctional setting,” Sperrazza said.

Officials will implement mail scanning and screening technology by the end of the year with state funding provided in the 2025 budget lawmakers approved in June, Sperrazza said. The heightened postal scrutiny comes after officials launched a pilot program last year intended to strengthen safeguards against drug smuggling by mail.

“This mail scanning technology processes original documents off-site, scans them, and then distributes copies of the mail to the population to stem the flow of contraband,” Sperrazza said.

East Jersey State Prison, which incarcerates about 1,200 men, has a history of both drug-related deaths — a Newark man incarcerated there died in 2020 after reacting badly to synthetic drugs in his cell — and drug smuggling by staff and others, including gang members and mob bosses.

Cassella was serving a 20-year prison sentence for an October 2011 car crash that killed a Mount Arlington police officer. In that incident, Cassella was under the influence of several drugs when he crossed a median on Route 80 in Roxbury Township and hit officer Joseph Wargo’s cruiser head-on. Wargo died soon after at the hospital. Cassella told a trooper at the scene he was in recovery for heroin addiction, court records show. He pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in 2013.

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