INMATE FOUND DEAD IN JAIL ID’D
Court records show man had history of schizophrenia
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department announced Thursday that Leonel Villaseñor, 31, had died in the downtown Central Jail on May 4. While Villaseñor’s death was made public on May 6, his name was not released until his family was notified about his death.
Court records show that Villaseñor, the ninth person to die in San Diego County jail custody this year, had a history of schizophrenia dating back to at least 2014, when he would have been 23 years old.
People with mental illness are disproportionately represented in jail populations and, according to a 2019 investigation by The
San Diego Union-Tribune, Dying Behind Bars, while people with a diagnosed mental illness make up roughly one-third of the local jail population, they represent about half of all incustody deaths.
Villaseñor’s cause of death is unknown, pending further tests by the county Medical Examiner’s Office, said sheriff’s homicide Lt. Chris Steffen. Steffen said Villaseñor was booked into jail at 2:56 p.m. and found unresponsive in a holding cell three hours later, slumped over a wall partition near a toilet.
Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful and he was pronounced dead shortly before 6:30 p.m.
According to court records, Villaseñor’s criminal history consists largely of petty theft convictions.
Twice, he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial, meaning a court-appointed psychiatrist determined he was too mentally ill to assist in his own defense, let alone understand the judicial process.
In May 2014, a San Diego Superior Court judge ordered the Sheriff’s Department to transport Villaseñor to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County for treatment. The judge also ordered that he be involuntarily medicated.
Due to a shortage of beds at the hospital, he was not transported until four months later, according to court records. He remained in jail during the wait.
Three weeks after his arrival at Patton, his treating psychiatrist sent a letter to the court. Dated Oct. 1, 2014, it notes his schizophrenia diagnosis and says he was being administered Risperdal, an antipsychotic medication, and Propranolol, which is used to treat anxiety.
The letter describes Villaseñor as “at high risk for discontinuing his medication in the absence of a court order” and that he “risks serious harm to his physical and mental health if he is not treated with antipsychotic medication.”
The letter goes on to say that with the right medication, Villaseñor could be restored to competency within six months.
Villasenor was found competent to stand trial on Dec. 12, 2014, and returned to San Diego’s Central Jail.
In August 2018, a psychiatrist again found Villaseñor incompetent to stand trial and ordered him committed to Patton State Hospital for a maximum three years. Again, a judge ordered that he be involuntarily medicated.
But this time, Villaseñor remained in jail. Because of the waitlist for Patton, the Sheriff’s Department had created a jail-based competency treatment program in 2016. Under the program, Villaseñor would have been placed in a unit on the jail’s sixth floor — the floor reserved for people with mental illness — medicated and provided with worksheets that ask questions like, “Who is the person at the front of the courtroom?”
Court records show he was found competent four months later, on Dec. 17, 2018, and pleaded guilty to petty theft and vandalism. But records also suggest his public defender felt he would benefit from treatment, not more jail time. In April 2019, a judge opted to place Villaseñor, who was homeless at the time, on probation for three years with the requirement that he enroll in the Center Star Assertive Community Treatment program, which specializes in services for people with serious mental illness and a criminal record.
Records show that Villaseñor initially complied with program rules, but within less than a year, his probation was revoked and he was back in jail. Why this happened is not clear; available court records say only that Villaseñor denied violating probation. He would spend an additional five months in jail.
Between his release in July 2020 and May 4, 2022, when he was arrested for the final time, Villaseñor was in and out of jail at least five times. Court records show that last fall, his public defender requested a competency exam — likely the only way to get him treatment — but the evaluator found Villasenor competent. The Union-Tribune was unable to determine the outcome of the case because the court file could not be located.