An Oʻahu circuit judge has ordered the state of Hawaiʻi to pay $1.1 million to the family of Diamond Simeona-Agoo, a 21-year-old who hanged herself at the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center in 2022 after jail staff moved her into solitary disciplinary segregation despite her documented history of suicide attempts. Simeona-Agoo was pronounced dead five days later at The Queen's Medical Center.
Judge Jordon Kimura found that jail staff failed to exercise reasonable care by leaving Simeona-Agoo alone in segregation with access to hanging means, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. The judge concluded that placing her in solitary with inadequate precautions substantially contributed to her death, writing that her act of self-harm did not sever the chain of causation because staff left her alone with previously used hanging means and enough time to act before anyone intervened.
Simeona-Agoo had post-traumatic stress disorder, methamphetamine-induced psychosis and audio hallucinations, and she began using methamphetamine at about age 17, per the outlet's reporting. She was awaiting trial on a robbery charge when she died. On February 7, 2022, she told jail staff she wanted to kill herself and wrapped a sheet around her neck, prompting staff to place her on suicide watch. She tried unsuccessfully to hang herself with a sheet tied to a cell vent on March 11, 2022. She was later approved for release from the jail's mental health module on June 15, 2022 — the same day jail officials moved her to disciplinary segregation to punish misconduct that included slapping bread covered with an unknown liquid onto a correctional lieutenant, threatening a worker and punching a nurse. Shortly before 7:30 p.m. that evening, she hanged herself with a sheet tied to the cell vent.
A Pattern Of Warnings And Payouts
Eric Seitz, who represented Simeona-Agoo's estate and her mother, Joycelyn Simeona, said people with severe mental health issues should receive care in medical facilities rather than prisons. Seitz told the outlet he has other inmate-suicide and attempted-suicide cases at OCCC scheduled for trial later this year, and said Hawaiʻi needs adequate mental health facilities instead of placing mentally ill people in prison.
This is not the state's first costly judgment tied to jail suicides. The state settled a lawsuit for $550,000 over Daisy Kasitati's 2022 suicide at Maui Community Correctional Center, and paid $800,000 to settle a lawsuit over Jimuel Gatioan's 2023 death at OCCC — a case in which a prosecutor and Gatioan’s defense attorney called the facility with a warning that he was suicidal before he hanged himself in his cell, according to News From The States. A court previously awarded $1.375 million in the 2017 suicide of Joseph O'Malley at Hālawa Correctional Facility.
Systemic Strain Across Hawaiʻi's Jails
Tommy Johnson, director of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, testified that transfers of seriously mentally ill inmates to Hawaiʻi State Hospital were approved in only about one out of 10 cases. Seitz separately agreed in 2025 to a state settlement requiring outside experts to assess prison and jail mental health services; those experts, Jeffrey Metzner and Bhushan Agharkar, reported that mental health services at OCCC and Hālawa were inadequate and very problematic. Suicides or suspected suicides accounted for one-third of deaths in Hawaiʻi's correctional system during 2024 and 2025, compared with 8% of deaths in U.S. state and federal prisons nationally in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
That settlement followed a September 2025 federal court dismissal of a class-action lawsuit after the state agreed to a broad review of mental health policies, according to Prison Legal News. The litigation emerged amid broader documented crises in the state's correctional network, including five confirmed or suspected inmate suicides at Hālawa between summer 2024 and spring 2025, as reported by News From The States.
Overcrowding And Staffing Shortfalls
OCCC, which first opened in 1916 and had further portions built in the 1970s, has a design capacity of 628 prisoners and routinely houses 900 to 1,000 inmates — about 152% of capacity — forcing some detainees to sleep on floor mattresses, per Honolulu Civil Beat's earlier reporting. The state's correctional system also faced a 28% staffing vacancy rate among adult corrections officers as of late 2024, with 434 of 1,535 positions unfilled, according to Courthouse News, a shortage that has forced routine mandatory double shifts for guards. A January 2025 survey by the Hawaiʻi Correctional System Oversight Commission found that 8% of jail staff and 4% of prison staff had seriously considered suicide in the preceding year.
The state reorganized its former Department of Public Safety into the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on January 1, 2024, under Act 278, shifting law enforcement duties to a separate new agency in an effort to focus resources on custody care and rehabilitation. In 2025, lawmakers enacted Act 292, restricting cell confinement of 20 or more hours a day unless the state proves by clear and convincing evidence that a less restrictive placement cannot prevent immediate harm.
State Response And Next Steps
Attorney General's Office spokeswoman Toni Schwartz said the office was reviewing the judge's order. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not respond to a request for comment. The department requested and received additional funding in 2026 to upgrade mental health services, and Johnson has estimated that hiring additional professional staff — including psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers and case managers — for state prisons and jails could cost $4 million to $8 million annually.
Johnson also announced a plan this year to move several dozen minimum-security inmates from Hālawa to Waiawa Correctional Facility in central Oʻahu, saying the move would provide inmates a more therapeutic environment. Separately, the state completed a $63-million, 176-bed expansion of the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua in September 2024, intended to relocate all incarcerated women out of OCCC. Plans to replace OCCC itself with a $1 billion facility remain delayed because construction first requires relocating the state animal quarantine station in Hālawa, a logistical snag that has pushed the project years behind the state's original timeline.
