Shadle wrote a proposal two years ago to provide more intensive care for the men of F Dorm Quad 2 as part of a larger plan pitched by Liberty for more money.

"This is an issue with constitutional implications," Liberty's $2.5 million request said. "The state has an obligation . . . to address treatment of mental illness and developmental disabilities."

But the DCF -- repeatedly turned down for increases in the past -- did not include it in its budget request.

Now the state is being sued in federal court because civil rights attorneys claim that offenders are not receiving proper care -- let alone sexual offender treatment.

"You have to make sure that people being detained at the facility are receiving constitutionally proper care and treatment. Clearly, that's not happening," said Kristen Cooley Lentz, an attorney for the Florida Institutional Legal Services in Gainesville and one of the lead lawyers in the class-action lawsuit.

Liberty said it created a special mental health unit in August 2004 -- five years after the program started.

A man housed in the quad died after a brawl over a bag of cheese curls.

Donnelly

Daniel Donnelly, 38, sat at a table in the bay area of F Dorm Quad 2 when Alfredo Roebuck, 48, called in payment for two rolled cigarettes he had given Donnelly earlier.

Owed to Roebuck: a bag of Cheetos.

Donnelly, five- feet, four- inches tall, 134 pounds, had a history of reneging on barters, common at a facility where many men have no money. He refused to give the bag to Roebuck -- who was five inches taller and nearly 100 pounds heavier.

Offenders in F Dorm say no guards were watching when Roebuck and Donnelly began to scuffle.

State reports say there was one staff member present, a 51-year-old therapeutic assistant responsible for monitoring all four quads in the dorm while most offenders were at lunch -- a deficiency noted in reports conducted after Donnelly's death.

After the altercation, Donelly's condition rapidly deteriorated. He later slipped into a coma. Paramedics airlifted him to Lee Memorial Hospital, where he was placed on life support.

Donnelly died nine days later, after his family decided to remove his feeding tube.

Donnelly's death came as no surprise to Kenneth Dud- ding, a former Washington, D.C., police detective, hired by the center as an internal investigator in March 2004.

INVESTIGATIONS
DETECTIVE BLOWS WHISTLE

During the next year, he conducted investigations at a facility that had completely broken down as an inadequate, untrained staff struggled to handle hundreds of men.

In one case, Jerome Wager, an offender with severe mental illness, was able to climb onto the roof of one of the buildings in April 2004. Instead of trying to coax him into climbing down, staff on duty rushed him. So Wagner jumped off the roof and injured his left leg. He was later treated by DeSoto County emergency medical workers.

In another case, a two-time sexual offender named Jorge Delgado stabbed offender Marshal Watson 12 times, using a 10-inch metal shank with a white-taped handle in October 2004.

After the incident, staff ordered offenders in the dorm to clean up the crime scene with bleach, ruining an investigation by the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office, according to an internal report.