On the morning of May 23, 2022, Crystal Leuenberger told the Washington County deputies she was experiencing withdrawal. In jail later that day, she walked unsteadily, appeared lethargic and complained of stomach pain, police records show. Her pale skin felt cold, a deputy said. But when a nurse assessed her withdrawal symptoms using a standardized scale during an initial health assessment, they registered as “mild.” Sixteen hours after her arrival, she died alone in her cell — not from drug use or withdrawal but from acute bacterial peritonitis, a treatable emergency condition that would have been high on the list to rule out but that no one from the jail clinic caught. The determination that county officials had no record of Leuenberger ever receiving an abdominal exam — and that her distress was instead diagnosed as opioid withdrawal — came in a 26-page report former Washington County Sheriff Pat Garrett commissioned for the purpose of “transparency and improvement” after what he ...