ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The family of a man who died by suicide in a Virginia prison after his antipsychotic medication was stopped has received a $1.75 million settlement in a civil lawsuit.
Records from the U.S. District Court in Alexandria show that the family of Christopher Lapp, who died in Alexandria prison in 2021, accepted the plea offer Thursday from a psychiatrist who worked at the facility and was targeted in the lawsuit.
Lapp, who was 62 when he died, was being held in jail awaiting sentencing on a federal charge for the armed robbery of a Wells Fargo Bank in Great Falls in November 2018. Lapp was bipolar and had a history of mental health problems, and The robbery occurred during what the judge called a manic episode and what his family’s lawyer described as a psychotic breakdown.
He was initially found incompetent to stand trial, but was reinstated after being sent to the federal medical prison in Butner, North Carolina, where he received mental health treatment.
Lapp subsequently decided to plead guilty to the bank robbery charge. Judge TS Ellis III accepted the plea, but ordered that Lapp be returned to Butner while he awaited sentencing so he could continue treatment.
But Butner refused to take him back, saying it had a policy against accepting an inmate who had not yet been sentenced for “continuity of care purposes.”
Lapp remained in Alexandria Prison, and the psychiatrist who evaluated him there discontinued his medications after Lapp insisted he did not need them.
Lapp hanged himself in his cell in May 2021, about a month after his plea. In a note he left for his daughter, he wrote that “some bad people have been after me for a while.”
A month later, Ellis chastised Butner officials at a hearing for ignoring his order. He also accepted a measure of guilt himself: Lapp’s lawyer had filed notice with the court in late April that Butner refused to admit his client, but Ellis said he was unaware that Lapp had not been transferred.
Last month, another judge dismissed the federal government as a defendant in the civil suit, but allowed the case against the prison psychiatrist to proceed.
The settlement does not constitute an admission of guilt or liability. In court filings, the psychiatrist’s lawyers argued, among other things, that Lapp did not want to take the antipsychotic medications and that he was unable to force him.
The prison declined to comment Friday.
Lapp was a nuclear physicist with multiple degrees, including a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His father, Ralph Lapp, was a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project.
He lived in a wealthy neighborhood in Great Falls, where he owned a $1.3 million home. Prosecutors said in court filings that Lapp had multiple romantic interests, including a Playboy model, and “he worked to keep his romantic love interests satisfied with extra money.”
