QuickTake:

The mother of Roy Bennett Jr., a former Oregon State Hospital patient, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the psychiatric hospital. Bennett, 32, died of a fentanyl overdose in 2024 while in the hospital after a visitor gave it to him, the lawsuit says. 

Oregon State Hospital faces a $2.5 million wrongful death lawsuit after a patient died at the hospital in 2024 of a fentanyl overdose, allegedly after a visitor slipped it to him and staffers failed to stop the exchange. 

Diane Jennison, the mother and estate representative of Roy Bennett Jr., filed the lawsuit in Marion County Circuit Court Monday, May 18. 

The May 2024 death is among five unexpected patient deaths at the facility since November 2023, including a death in April 2025 involving Kenneth Hass, a patient from Lane County. The unusually high number of patient fatalities, including the overdose, is acknowledged in a confidential internal report into the Lane County patient’s death that Lookout Eugene-Springfield obtained and previously reported. In that report, staff said there was a “culture of complacency.”

The lawsuit alleges that Oregon State Hospital staff failed to properly screen the visitor who brought drugs into the facility; failed to properly monitor the visit; and failed to properly check on Bennett’s well-being in the hours before staffers found him unresponsive. 

A spokesperson for Oregon State Hospital declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Oregon State Hospital, the state’s psychiatric hospital, is run by the Oregon Health Authority, with a main campus in Salem and a satellite campus in Junction City. Most patients are there on aid-and-assist orders because they need treatment in order to aid in their defense against criminal charges.

The lawsuit’s allegations are based in part on records, video footage and the findings of inspectors with the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which found violations and lapses in care when investigating the death. Media outlets at the time reported the violations and Oregon State Hospital’s efforts to address the problems. 

In Bennett’s case, he was charged in 2021 in Multnomah County Circuit Court in connection with a vehicular homicide case. He remained in custody until April 2023, when he was found unable to aid in his defense in the case and transported to Oregon State Hospital. He stayed until January 2024, when authorities found him fit to proceed and took him back to the Multnomah County Detention Center. 

By April 2024, Bennett’s psychological conditions worsened and he was sent back to the state hospital, where he remained until he died, the lawsuit said. 

The lawsuit alleges the hospital staff failed to adequately screen the visitor for contraband. The lawsuit does not identify the visitor. 

Video footage of the visitor and patient show they sat at a table, focusing their attention on their pants and feet under the table without staff intervening, the lawsuit said. Further, the required two security staff and two nurses were not present at different points during the one-hour visit, the lawsuit alleges.

That evening, Bennett told another patient he had received drugs from the visitor, the lawsuit said.

In the early morning hours that followed, staffers checking on the patient’s room during required hourly checks performed inadequate checks without ensuring the patient was breathing, most of them only looking through a window and not opening the door, the lawsuit alleges. For example, video footage shows that a staffer looked through a door window for one-tenth of a second and recorded in the log that the patient was breathing, the lawsuit alleges. 

Shortly after 8 a.m. the morning Bennett was declared dead, a staffer opened the door, called his name three times and got no response and didn’t check to see if he was breathing, the lawsuit said. At 8:34 a.m., another staffer, a nurse, also opened the door and walked away without urgency.

About 13 minutes later, another staffer entered the room and left with urgency to get more staff, the lawsuit said. When emergency medical technicians arrived at about 9 a.m., they said that rigor mortis had already set in the patient’s jaw, making intubation difficult. 

An autopsy found Bennett died of “mixed drug toxicity,” which included the combination of illicit fentanyl and other medications that were prescribed to him and provided at the hospital. 

The lawsuit also alleges the hospital has failed to properly address previous deficiencies that federal inspectors have found concerning patient care and contraband entering the hospital. The lawsuit says the hospital had “substantial problems” before Bennett’s death.

Those problems include patient deaths and other lapses in care, including a finding in May 2022 that the Junction City campus failed to provide adequate observation and failed to prevent patient suicide attempts and harm themselves with contraband. 

The lawsuit also highlights media reports about Oregon State Hospital, including Lookout’s April 2025 story about staffers who voiced concerns to Oregon Health Authority Director Sejal Hathi about the hospital and an Oregonian story published in March 2026 about hospital whistleblowers who raised concerns.

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.