WIFE DISPUTES REPORT ON INMATE'S DEATH

Tracy Hensley says if her husband had just been taken to the hospital when
he was arrested on Nov. 7, 2001 instead of to the Sumner County Jail and
placed in a restraint chair, he would be alive today.

"I will concede my husband did drugs. I'm not going to lie about that. But,
if he had been taken to the hospital he would be alive right now," Hensley
said.

Steven Brett Hensley, 33, of Westmoreland, died at the jail while in a
restraint chair of a cocaine overdose, an investigation conducted by the
Gallatin Police Department concluded. Sumner County District Attorney
General Ray Whitley has cleared the county sheriff's department of any
wrongdoing in Hensley's death - his widow disagrees with that conclusion.

"Anyone who has ever done cocaine or knows about cocaine knows if someone
is going to overdose it is going to happen within 30 minutes to an hour,
not five hours later," Hensley says.

Whitley says an analysis done by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation lab
shows Steven Brett Hensley had a large amount of cocaine in his system,
enough to kill 10 people. Medical Examiner Charles Harlan ruled the death
as a cocaine overdose.

However, Hensley's widow says if her husband had received medical attention
in November, as he had after past arrests, he would not have died in the
restraint chair.

"The time before when he was arrested he was taken to the hospital and had
his stomach pumped," she said. Admitting her husband had been arrested
numerous times, and was addicted to cocaine, Hensley says he should not
have been treated as "less than human."

Hensley also maintains inmates in the cellblock saw her husband having
seizures and tried to tell jail employees.
These inmates, she alleges, were never interviewed during the investigation
and those she talked with said they were afraid to come forward.

Also in question by Hensley is her arrest a month after her husband's death
by Gallatin police. Hensley says she was arrested in a private car for
public intoxication and when taken to the jail, she was placed in the same
restraint chair where he husband died.

"One month almost to the day after my husband died the city police took me
out of my car and (the jail) put me in that chair for three hours," she says.

Gallatin police records show Hensley was arrested on Dec. 6. 2001 at the
Triple S Market for public intoxication. General Sessions Court records
show the charge against Hensley was dismissed after paying court costs of
$159.

Hensley has retained attorneys from Nashville and says legal action on both
her husband's death and her arrest will be filed. Sumner County Sheriff
J.D. Vandercook refused comment on any of Hensley's allegations because of
possible litigation.

Since Vandercook has been sheriff there have been four deaths in the jail,
two by hanging, one by natural causes and Hensley's death.