Natasha Tosado
Role at the time: Plaintiff, Beatty v. Lamont; mother of Jayson Negron
Response to this claim
Connecticut's prison-debt law, under which the state can seize up to half of a settlement, inheritance or other financial windfall for up to 20 years after release, violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on excessive fines.
“No family should have to bury a child, and the state is making that pain worse. I will never stop grieving Jayson. The settlement in his death was the best acknowledgment we could get that they took his life, and that it was wrong. The state trying to take that money forces me and my family to relive the trauma of Jayson’s death, and it has left me angry and hurt. By joining this lawsuit, I am fighting for myself and for other families, because none of us should have to go through this”
ACLU of Connecticut's own case page for Beatty v. Lamont (D. Conn. No. 3:22-cv-00380), the federal class-action lawsuit challenging Connecticut's cost-of-incarceration law under the Eighth Amendment's excessive fines clause. States the filing date, the defendants, the March 2023 ruling, the plaintiffs who joined in April 2023, and the October 2024 outcome, and carries first-person statements from plaintiffs Teresa Beatty and Natasha Tosado.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
Tosado directly objects to the state pursuing part of a wrongful-death settlement tied to her son's death, describing the practice as adding to her family's harm.