Inmate dead in cell for days; staff blamed smell on sewer

SAN DIEGO – An inmate at the California state prison in Otay Mesa was dead for days last April before prison staffers realized it, according to a recently released autopsy report.

Staffers blamed the smell on the sewer system. And during that time, the man’s cellmate discouraged people from checking on the already dead inmate, who was under a blanket on his bunk at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.

And the cellmate, it turns out, was serving time for homicide related to the death of his own father, whose decomposed body was found under a mattress in his home.

The Medical Examiner’s Office, which released the report earlier this month, ruled James Acuna’s cause and manner of death as “undetermined,” noting that it was possible the 58-year-old inmate on his third prison term died of natural causes.

Last year, Sheriff’s Department officials said Acuna had been dead two to three days before he was found.

The investigative narrative and autopsy report – in which information gleaned from medical records is redacted – provides a glimpse into the death of Acuna, who was found in his cell in the late morning of April 24, 2017, his blanket pulled over his head.

The report states that, at one point, the smell from Acuna’s two-man, secondfloor cell brought complaints from other inmates and prompted staffers to put in a work order, suspecting there was a sewer problem.

But the report provides little in the way of specifics, including the identity of the cellmate.

It is also unclear how staffers were unaware of Acuna’s death, despite routine daily head counts, including a count during which inmates are required to stand at their cell doors.

Sheriff’s homicide detectives – who handled the investigation – determined that no homicide had occurred.

Sheriff’s Lt. Rich Williams said a number of factors went into that conclusion, including the absence of trauma that could have resulted in death. Investigators also looked at Acuna’s medical and custodial history “as well as the overall totality of the circumstances surrounding the death.”

Williams declined to provide details into what the cellmate told investigators, including why he did not report Acuna’s death to prison staffers, or whether the cellmate suffers any sort of mental illness.

The autopsy stated that Acuna had various ailments but documented no natural disease or traumatic injury.