A $16 million settlement has been reached between San Diego County and the household of a 22-year-old man who died in San Diego Central Jail three years in the past.
The household’s attorneys pointed to the county’s failure to protect 55 hours of surveillance footage capturing the world exterior William Hayden Schuck’s jail cell as a significant factor within the case’s decision.
The settlement, believed to be the most important wrongful demise settlement in San Diego County historical past, resolves a lawsuit filed by the household of Schuck, who died in March 2022.
That occurred to even be one month after the California State Auditor launched a scathing report on the excessive price of in-custody deaths at San Diego County jails. The audit examined 185 deaths inside the San Diego County jail system for greater than a decade by way of 2020, a price that was among the many highest within the state over that interval.
With the brand new settlement, the county can have paid out about $30 million in two years, related to simply two deaths. Different lawsuits are pending.
Attorneys representing the Schuck household say quite a few deficiencies highlighted within the state’s report, corresponding to insufficient security checks of jail cells and delays in offering medical therapy, performed direct roles in Schuck’s demise from dehydration and drug toxicity.
Throughout a Wednesday information convention asserting the settlement, the attorneys additionally stated the deletion of the video footage probably performed a job within the county settling the case. They’d argued in court docket filings that the footage may have confirmed whether or not or not jail employees carried out security checks of Schuck’s cell throughout a interval when his well being quickly declined.
Timothy Scott, a kind of attorneys, stated a San Diego federal choose sanctioned the county and dominated that if the case had gone to trial, jurors can be instructed that they might be allowed to imagine no matter was contained within the footage would have mirrored badly on the county.
“I do assume that confronted with that form of jury instruction at trial, it did make the county extra prepared to settle,” Scott stated.
An announcement issued by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Workplace on Wednesday famous that Schuck died previous to Sheriff Kelly Martinez taking workplace in 2023. She was elected to her first full time period in November 2022.
Nonetheless, the division veteran had served as undersheriff, second in command on the workplace, since 2021.
In January 2022, weeks earlier than the discharge of the audit, former Sheriff Invoice Gore had introduced that he would depart workplace early, on Feb. 3, 2022. The state launched the jail audit that day.
“Since that point, vital enhancements have been made to our jail system,” officers stated in Wednesday’s assertion. “Far more is required, which would require vital funding from the county of San Diego.”
However the prolonged assertion additionally identified that the settlement funds will come out of the Sheriff’s Workplace funds and the division “had no participation or enter” on the county’s determination to settle.
Officers went on to quote outcomes over the past yr, throughout which San Diego County jails recorded the bottom variety of in-custody deaths in additional than a decade, with a 65% discount in overdoses. There additionally have been zero suicides in 2024, for the primary time in additional than 20 years.
“The Sheriff’s Workplace stays dedicated to studying from the previous,” officers stated close to the conclusion of the assertion, “whereas persevering with ahead progress and guaranteeing that previous deficiencies should not repeated,”
That comes too late for Schuck, nevertheless, who was arrested on March 10, 2022 on suspicion of driving beneath the affect. He died lower than every week later.
Attorneys say that upon his arrest, he displayed clear indicators of intoxication and withdrawal that ought to have resulted in medical therapy, however he was as a substitute positioned in a cell with no mattress, the place he was “forgotten” for days, in accordance with legal professional Michelle Angeles.
The day earlier than his March 16 demise, Angeles stated he was discovered bare with sores on his physique, whereas meals and feces have been strewn about his cell. Throughout a court docket look that day, he was unable to even affirm his title, main a choose to order that he be medically screened, in accordance with the household’s lawsuit.
The Schucks’ attorneys say that medical screening by no means occurred.
The criticism states that regardless of the medication present in his system after his demise, there have been no indications that he used medication whereas in jail or had interactions with another inmates previous to his demise.
Together with the financial element, Scott stated the settlement consists of an settlement to institute modifications to the county’s coaching program for detention and correctional officers, although lots of these proposed modifications have been being finalized.
The $16 million determine exceeds a $15 million settlement reached final yr between the county and the household of Elisa Serna, who died in 2019 on the Las Colinas ladies’s jail in Santee.
