ACLU, Sheriff to Investigate Death in Chains

Officials of the ACLU and Orange County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department launched separate inquiries Thursday into the case of a cancer patient who died this week while shackled to his hospital bed in a jail ward .

If the American Civil Liberties Union finds that inmate Donald F. Arbiso suffered from a lack of proper medical treatment, as he alleged before he died, ACLU attorney Dick Herman said he would refer the case to U.S. District Judge William P. Gray, who has been monitoring conditions in the County Jail.

Arbiso, 41, of Costa Mesa was suffering from inoperable liver cancer when he died Tuesday night in the jail wing of UCI Medical Center in Orange. Despite anguished pleas from his family, sheriff’s officials refused to unshackle Arbiso’s ankle from his bed in the hours before his death. Nor would they remove a guard from outside his door.

In the weeks before he died, Arbiso, who for 13 months had been awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder, had complained to the state Court of Appeal in Santa Ana that he was not receiving adequate treatment for his chronic liver condition and asked that he be given a liver transplant.

Arbiso’s family and doctors said his liver was ruined by many years of heavy heroin and alcohol use.

The appellate court instructed the county to respond to Arbiso’s allegations. In their response, county officials denied mistreating the inmate and maintained that he was receiving regular medical checkups. Before the transplant issue could be resolved by the court, Arbiso was diagnosed Monday as having liver cancer.

After learning of Arbiso’s death and the conditions surrounding it, Herman expressed anger that the inmate had remained shackled when he was barely able to move.

“I think the shackling of a dying man to his bed is really unnecessary,” Herman said. “I find it an outrage.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Richard Olson said Thursday that his department also is reviewing circumstances in the Arbiso case but declined further comment.

Sheriff’s officials have said that shackling is a routine precaution against prisoners escaping from the hospital. But Herman charged that inmates are shackled and chained for the purpose of humiliation. Fellow inmates agreed, saying shackling is also used as a form of punishment.

“If they catch a person smoking on the bus or in the hallways, they shackle your hands,” said jail inmate Thomas F. Maniscalco, a lawyer who is awaiting trial in a triple-murder case.

Maniscalco said Arbiso was disciplined only a week before his death for failing to rise in time for morning roll call at the main men’s jail in Santa Ana. Arbiso did not make that 4:30 a.m. roll call on May 8 because he was in severe pain after undergoing a liver biopsy the previous day, Maniscalco said.

According to a jail Notice of Minor Disciplinary Violation that Maniscalco quoted from in an interview Thursday, Arbiso also was cited that day for failing to appear in his jail-issue jump suit and for disrupting the roll count by his non-attendance. Prisoners are required to stand outside their cells in full jail issue during the morning head count, Maniscalco said.

Arbiso’s punishment was two days’ confinement in his cell and loss of privileges such as television, Maniscalco added.

The shackling is just one concern of the ACLU, Herman said. The other involves allegations by Arbiso and other inmates over the years of being denied proper medical treatment.

“This is not the first time a known (case of) cancer has failed to be treated or a known cancer has not been diagnosed” in the jail, Herman said.

Herman said he would ask for the coroner’s report on Arbiso’s death and have it reviewed by outside medical experts.

Depending on the reaction of those outside experts, Herman said he may “have these reports sent to Judge Gray and say there are still more problems in the jail.”

Gray has issued sweeping orders over the years concerning overcrowding and other problems in the jail.

Before his death, Arbiso’s court-appointed lawyers had worked to have him freed so that he would not die in custody. He faced trial last week in the March 20 stabbing of a family friend, but the trial date was postponed because of Arbiso’s illness.

Now that the inmate is dead, private investigator Larry Crandall, who was working on Arbiso’s case, said he would submit the death certificate to the district attorney’s office so that charges against Arbiso could be routinely dismissed.