The commissioners voted 2-1 to approve the settlement, which includes $2 million to be paid by the county’s insurance company and another $18 million that the county will pay over the next three years with interest.
Cleveland County Commissioner Rod Cleveland cast the lone vote against the settlement, saying he wanted to take the case to trial to try to avoid “immediately and permanently” shifting the cost to taxpayers.
“Settling now simply hands over public money without testing liability or damages,” Cleveland said after the vote.
Commissioners Jacob McHughes and Rusty Grissom said in a joint statement that they voted to approve the settlement on the recommendation of attorneys who said the county could face paying millions more if the case went to trial.
The average homeowner in Cleveland County can expect to pay an additional $55.68 a year in property taxes over the next three years to cover the cost of the settlement, according to a preliminary estimate from the county.
The Frontier previously reported with The Marshall Project onHanchett’s death and the deaths of other arrestees in county jails that contracted with the Oklahoma-based company TK Health, previously known as Turn Key Health Clinics.
The company’s medical director, Dr. William Cooper, previously said in response that “Turn Key’s goal is to provide the highest level of care pursuant to the client’s budget. … The company continues to expand because of the quality of the care provided.”
He added that Turn Key is “constantly working to build on the quality of care it provides.”
Hanchett was arrested two days after Thanksgiving in 2022 after an altercation with police at the Norman AT&T store. Workers had called police to report that Hanchett was behaving erratically at the store.
At the Cleveland County Detention Center, it took 10 days for a doctor to consult on Hanchett’s care while she was in psychosis, The Frontier and The Marshall Project reported. She later died from complications of a heart defect, with contributing factors including psychosis “with auditory and visual hallucinations” and dehydration.
Hanchett’s husband Daniel Hanchett filed a lawsuit against the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office and TK Health in 2024.
Attorney Dan Smolen, who represents Hanchett’s husband in the case, said he believed the settlement with the county before trial was one of the largest of its kind ever approved.
The lawsuit against TK Health continues. The company has asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing that a licensed practical nurse examined Hanchett when she arrived at the jail but that she refused to cooperate with a medical intake screening. The company has also argued that other nurses and providers periodically assessed Hanchett during her time at the jail.
TK Health said in a statement that it couldn’t comment on pending litigation and that the company remained “committed to defending our organization.”
The company stopped providing medical care at the Cleveland County jail in 2025 after it said in a letterit would not renew its contract with the county.
Proceeds from the settlement with the county will go to Hanchett’s estate. She left behind two sons, both now teenagers.
“This will help at least give them some financial security,” Smolen said.
Other Oklahoma counties have faced costly judgments in connection with jail deaths in recent years. Voters in Wagoner County approved a sales tax increase in 2025 to pay for a$13.5 million settlementin the death of Angela Liggans, a type-1 diabetic who died in custody in 2021. Ottawa County recently lost an appeal to overturn a $33-million jury verdict in the case of Terral Ellis Jr., who died of sepsis and pneumonia in 2015 after jail workers ignored his cries for help. Smolen also represented the Liggans and Ellis families in their cases.
Smolen said he hopes the multi-million-dollar judgments will show communities the importance of providing better funding for county jails to help prevent deaths.
“Hopefully people can get to a place where they realize that it’s important to deal with it before you kill people and put the appropriate amount of funding into it,” he said.
This article first appeared on The Frontier and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
