Dangerous Jails: A Death…With Questions…in CJ

The Los Angeles Daily Journal’s Greg Katz has an interesting and worrisome story about a 22-year-old inmate named Marlon Martinez who, on Christmas Day, was found dead in his six-person cell in CJ—Men’s Central Jail. After the death came to light, Lt. Pat Nelson of the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau told the Long Beach Press-Telegram that sheriff’s deputies were conducting a security check and found Martinez suffering from “respiratory distress” and were “unable to revive him.”

Martinez was no ordinary prisoner. He was accused of having strangled to death Lindon Barrett, a popular UC Riverside Literature professor and author who also helped found the African Studies Department at UC Irvine.

Now a new chapter in Martinez’ story has brought up questions about his death. . It seems that in October, two months before he died, Martinez told several of his fellow inmates that he had witnessed sheriff’s deputies beating another prisoner so badly that Martinez believed the man had died.

One of Martinez’ confidants contacted the ACLU and told them about the alleged deadly beating but did not give them Martinez’ name. The folks at the ACLU checked to see if anyone had died during the time period the mystery informant said the beating took place. No one had. With no more real leads to follow the ACLU lawyers kept the reported incident on their radar, but mostly waited to see if any other reports of a severe beating trickled in.

After Martinez’s death, another report did come in. The same informant who had contacted the ACLU back in October turned up again to say that the man who had witnessed the deadly—or nearly deadly— beating was the guy who had just died of some kind of respiratory distress in a six-man cell.

Greg Katz has the rest of the story (which you will find below). I have reprinted his article in its entirety since the Daily Journal is hidden behind a pay wall but occasionally the DJ folks are kind enough to share with me and fellow bloggers like Kevin Roderick articles they know will be of particular interest .

NOTE: There is one thing that Katz has a bit wrong. He states that the ACLU did not follow-up when they heard the initial accusations. Actually, the ACLU did. But learning that there was no death in the jail during the supposed time frame, there was little more they could do but ask around to see if any similar accounts surfaced. As I said above, after Martinez’ death, the second account did.

PS: Two weeks ago, I was given information on another another severe beating that took place in LA’s jail system, this time in Twin Towers, not CJ. The beaten inmate did not die, but he was in the hospital for 14-days. Now his cognitive impairment is such that he has had trouble recognizing his mother or sitting upright. He also has trouble breathing.

An LASD sergeant told the man’s attorney that her client was assaulted by two inmates.

Unlike Martinez, this man was in jail awaiting a hearing on a minor—and as yet unproven— domestic violence complaint.

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Here’s Greg Katz’s story:

DEAD INMATE HAD CLAIMED HE SAW ABUSE BY DEPUTIES
By Greg Katz
Daily Journal Staff Writer

A man who was found dead in his cell in the Men’s Central Jail on Christmas Day claimed to have witnessed Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies beating an inmate, an ACLU attorney told the Daily Journal.

The inmate, Marlon Martinez, 22, raised the allegations to at least one fellow inmate, as well as an outside visitor, according to people familiar with the matter. An intermediary later brought the allegations to the attention to the American Civil Liberites Union of Southern California, which monitors jail conditions.

The ACLU did not look into Martinez’s allegations because of the timing and quality of the information. Sheriff’s officials and a watchdog have begun to probe both Martinez’s death and the allegations he made beforehand.

Martinez was being held at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles for the alleged July 2008 murder of University of California, Riverside Professor Lindon Barrett.

“We became aware that he made (claims) of deputy abuse on inmates,” said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney of the ACLU of Southern California. The complaints regarded deputies “severely beating at least another inmate.”

Homicide detectives are examining Martinez’s death, said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore. He would not discuss any of the evidence, but said their preliminary finding was that it was not a homicide.

“Their initial analysis at this point is, it appears to be natural causes and it did not happen at the hand of another, and wasn’t an inmate or something like that,” Whitmore said. “But it’s still an open investigation. That’s important to remember.”

An official cause of death for Martinez has not been established. A coroner’s report is not due for four to six weeks, pending the completion of toxicology tests, Whitmore said.

Eliasberg said he did not want to pre-judge the investigation, “but, boy, we have serious concerns about what happened here.”

Details of the alleged beating Martinez said he saw are sparse.

The person who spoke to Martinez while he was in jail, who spoke to the Daily Journal on condition of anonymity, said Martinez alleged deputies severely beat another inmate sometime in early October. Martinez believed the beating had resulted in the man’s death, this person said.

At least one other inmate heard Martinez as he made the claim, the source said.

The person said the issue was reported to the ACLU through an intermediary several weeks after the alleged beating, but did not know whether Martinez made any official complaints to the sheriff’s department.

Whitmore said Martinez filed one official complaint while in jail. He said it had nothing to do with violence, but did not know its specific contents. He also said that no inmate deaths in September or October 2009 were found to be due to violence, but that the agency has opened probes into four alleged uses-of-force by deputies in the jail during that time.

Around the time of Martinez’s complaints, four inmates died in Men’s Central Jail, according to preliminary one-page reports the county filed with the California Department of Justice. Three were ruled “natural” and one as “pending investigation,” with no further detail about the deaths provided.

Eliasberg said the ACLU could not have done more after learning of Martinez’s complaints, because of when the organization learned of his concerns and the amount of information it received.

The ACLU monitors Men’s Central Jail as part of a long-running federal lawsuit about conditions there.

The group argued last year in federal court that the sheriff’s department does not do enough to protect inmates who complain of abuse by deputies. Eliasberg said the ACLU is concerned that deputies are too quickly exonerated when inmates complain of abuse.

Eliasberg said the ACLU receives complaints of various retaliation, ranging up to “heinous allegations of physical abuse,” after inmates complain to the organization about deputies.

In 2006, a lawsuit accused deputies of killing inmate Ramon Gavira, then making his death appear to be a suicide. The county settled for $750,000.

Michael Gennaco, head of the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review, which investigates jail deaths, said Martinez’s allegations are part of his examination.

“We’ll ensure that the department conducts a thorough investigation of that as well, and we’ll review the results of the investigation to ensure that it is thorough and fair,” Gennaco said.

However, Gennaco said, the name of the inmate who Martinez claimed was beaten is as yet unknown, which he called a “hurdle” to further scrutiny.

Martinez was arrested by Long Beach police July 13, 2008, after they discovered the body of UC Riverside Professor Lindon Barrett, who had been dead in his apartment for several days after being strangled. Police noticed Barrett’s car was missing.

“The defendant was seen driving the victim’s car and arrested,” said Los Angeles County District Attorney spokeswoman Shiara Dávila-Morales.

The case was People v. Martinez, NA078984 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed July 15, 2008).