DA clears officers in man’s death at jail

The Alameda County district attorney has cleared law enforcement officers in the death of a mentally ill man who died at Santa Rita Jail last year after being left chained to a jail door.

Christian Madrigal, 20, was found unresponsive on the afternoon of June 10, 2019, in his cell at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, just hours after his parents called police for help that morning. District Attorney Nancy O’Malley concluded that the evidence her office reviewed does not justify any criminal charges against any law enforcement officers involved in the case.

That day at 5:43 a.m., Fremont police were called to the Madrigal’s home where Christian was acting erratically and were told his family wanted him on a psychiatric hold to place him in the hospital. Madrigal had recently been released from the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center after he was arrested days earlier at the San Jose airport. At the airport, he caused a police and TSA reaction when he tried to get through security without a boarding pass and allegedly reached for a police officer’s gun.

On June 10, police decided he did not meet standards for a psychiatric hold, but because the stepfather had told them Madrigal may have been on drugs (marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms), police arrested him. His stepfather, at a news conference in September, said he was told by nurses to call police if he exhibited problems so they could help take him to a care facility. The stepfather, Jose Jaime, said he begged police not to arrest Madrigal.

“I was just trying to help my boy,” he said at the time.

Once at the Fremont Detention Center on June 10, Madrigal became uncooperative and was placed in a WRAP restraint device and taken to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. A WRAP is a type of full-body straitjacket used by police to restrain people.

At Santa Rita, Madrigal was placed in a cell, and eventually the WRAP device was removed. Although there was discussion of using another restraint device (a restraining chair), he was placed instead in handcuffs to his back, and then a lieutenant placed an ankle chain to those handcuffs on his wrists (not to his ankles). The ankle chain, or leg iron, is a metal chain with ankle cuffs at each end, according to the district attorney’s report. The chain itself was run through the open port of the jail door (called a cuffing port) and secured to the outside doorknob of the cell, the report states.

Madrigal was repeatedly told to put his hands through the port so that deputies could remove his handcuffs, giving him more freedom. But according to the report, which is based on a review of body camera footage and other video monitoring of the incident, Madrigal refused several times. He was, however, able to move his cuffs from the back of his body, to the front.

Around 5:20 p.m. that day, around 30 minutes after he was last checked on by a deputy, the lieutenant who placed the chain on his handcuffs found him unresponsive. Madrigal was sitting against the cell door, slumped down with the chain of his ankle restraints around his neck.

He was taken to Stanford Valley Care in Pleasanton where he later died on June 15. An autopsy concluded that he died of “anoxic encephalopathy” or a brain injury, because of hanging. Only marijuana was detected in a drug screening.

His family, represented by well-known civil rights attorney John Burris, filed a lawsuit for wrongful death against Fremont police and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, claiming excessive force in their son’s death.

In the prosecutor’s report, the district attorney found there were “shortcomings in the care” provided by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. Although the district attorney found that the use of the ankle chain “does not appear unreasonable,” the decision to leave him “secured to the restraint chain, unattended, is concerning.”

The lieutenant, who was the supervisor on duty, was placed on leave last year. The lawsuit filed by Madrigal’s family alleged he knew about the policy against chaining inmates to the door, but allowed Madrigal to be restrained that way regardless. The district attorney found that leaving a handcuffed inmate chained to a fixed object, in this case the door, is not a regular occurrence.

“Leaving an inmate unattended in this manner creates a risk that the inmate could become entangled in the chain or use the chain to attempt suicide,” the report states.

Burris, the family’s attorney, said in September when the lawsuit was announced that the young man should have never been left alone in the cell.

“He was chained to the wall like some crazed person,” Burris said at the time.

It seems the district attorney’s report agrees to some extent.

The deputies neglected to follow up with timely checks on Madrigal and he ended up strangled within a five to 10 minutes after the lieutenant last checked on him.

The district attorney concludes that Madrigal’s death is “tragic and admittedly concerning,” and that sheriff’s personnel neglected to check on him as required.

The district attorney’s office said they could not be proved “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the standard of proof for criminal charges, that the lapse in observations legally caused Madrigal’s death.

The report also says that records of treatment did not indicate that Madrigal was suicidal or had thoughts to harm himself.