Family of man who died in Seattle jail settles with county for $3.5M
The family of a man who died in the downtown Seattle jail in 2022 has reached a settlement with King County.
Michael Rowland, 63, died in 2022 after corrections officers restrained him stomach-down with their knees on his back. Police had brought him to the jail in the midst of a mental health crisis.
His family sued the county in federal court for $25 million, alleging that the county violated Rowland's civil rights, was negligent in its treatment of him and caused his wrongful death.
This week, King County agreed to pay Rowland's family $3.5 million as part of a settlement.
Steve Larsen, the deputy director of the county's Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, said in an emailed statement that the county and the Rowland family participated in mediation on Wednesday and "were able to come to a fair resolution of this difficult case."
"Mr. Rowland's death was deeply tragic," Larsen said in a statement. "Our thoughts remain with Ms. Karen Rowland and all of Mr. Rowland's loved ones. We hope this resolution will provide some closure to them. We are deeply sorry for their loss."
Attorneys representing the Rowland family notified The Seattle Times about the settlement but did not respond to additional requests for comment on Friday.
Five people, including Rowland, died in the downtown Seattle jail in the winter and spring of 2022 while the jail struggled with understaffing.
Police arrested Rowland at a downtown Seattle hotel and brought him to the King County Jail on April 19, 2022. Officers questioned Rowland but wrote in a report that none of his responses were "grounded in reality."
Rowland's family, including his wife and his daughter, told The Seattle Times police and jail officials should have recognized Rowland's physical and mental distress and diverted him to a hospital rather than jail.
A lack of urgent mental health care options means many people in crisis end up in jails or hospital emergency rooms. Seeking to add more care for people in crisis, King County is in the midst of creating five walk-in mental health centers that will also accept drop-offs from law enforcement and other first responders.
Corrections officers took Rowland to a cell, held down his arms and his legs, put their knees on his back, forcibly stripped him naked and changed him into jail-issued clothes. He was left in his cell alone in the same position, on his stomach.
Two minutes after corrections officers left his cell, jail staff noticed Rowland had stopped breathing. He was declared dead after attempts to save his life. The King County Medical Examiner's Office said he died of "sudden death during physical restraint," alongside other factors like cardiovascular disease, obesity and agitation with symptoms of acute psychosis.
The office labeled Rowland's manner of death as "undetermined," meaning that the medical examiner could not come to a conclusion about how he died.
The use of prone restraint has been increasingly controversial after George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis in 2020. Minnesota banned the use of prone restraint in jails and prisons after hearing testimony about the technique's danger in a trial of the police officer who killed Floyd.
In Tacoma, Manuel Ellis died in 2020 after police officers restrained him in the prone position. Washington bans the use of one kind of prone restraint, hog tying, but jails in the state have no prohibition on other forms of prone restraint.
Material from Seattle Times archives was included in this report.
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This story was originally published May 23, 2026 at 6:37 AM.