{"id":292585,"date":"2025-10-10T18:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T18:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/292585\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T18:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T18:21:10","slug":"federal-judge-sanctions-san-diego-county-for-erasing-critically-important-video-in-22-year-olds-jail-death-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/292585\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge sanctions San Diego County for erasing \u2018critically important\u2019 video in 22-year-old\u2019s jail death \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has sanctioned San Diego County for failing to preserve jail video footage that could have shed light on the final days of a 22-year-old man who died in the downtown Central Jail in 2022.<\/p>\n

In a ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw adopted in full a recommendation<\/a> by Magistrate Judge Allison Goddard, who found the San Diego Sheriff\u2019s Office failed to retain 57 hours of video from a hallway camera outside William Hayden Schuck\u2019s cell.<\/p>\n

Goddard made her recommendation in court on July 31 and in writing the following day. The county filed an objection two weeks later and requested a hearing earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Sabraw agreed with Goddard that the county had a clear obligation to preserve the footage once Schuck died and his family filed notice of potential litigation.<\/p>\n

He rejected arguments from a county attorney that the video was irrelevant because it didn\u2019t show the inside of the cell and would have only briefly shown Schuck being moved to a different cell.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ought to trigger a process where all of the recordings \u2014 no matter how many days leading up to the death from that detainee\u2019s time in custody \u2014 ought to be preserved,\u201d Sabraw said.<\/p>\n

Sabraw described the missing footage as \u201ccritically important\u201d because it could have shown whether deputies, medical staff or others came and went, or whether Schuck was ignored altogether.<\/p>\n

At a July 31 hearing, Goddard sharply criticized the county\u2019s handling of the footage, calling it \u201cshocking in the height of negligence<\/a>.\u201d In her tentative ruling, she noted the Sheriff\u2019s Office has a policy requiring that surveillance video relevant to an in-custody death be preserved for at least two years.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office saved 36 hours from the camera outside Schuck\u2019s cell, indicating someone found the footage relevant, Goddard said. But the remaining 57 hours was overwritten, even though the county received two preservation letters from the family\u2019s lawyers in April and September 2022.<\/p>\n

In a deposition, a sheriff\u2019s official acknowledged that \u201cthere probably isn\u2019t a single deputy in the department\u201d who knows the written retention policy. Instead, footage is automatically erased once the system reaches storage capacity \u2014 typically around nine months at the Central Jail.<\/p>\n

County attorney Steve Inman argued in court that the Sheriff\u2019s Office \u201cwould not have considered this allegedly missing video to be related to Schuck, because it didn\u2019t show Schuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attorneys for his family say the footage could have captured whether deputies performed welfare checks or if medical staff entered the area \u2014 both key issues in their lawsuit<\/a> accusing sheriff\u2019s staff of negligence.<\/p>\n

In a deposition, a deputy described Schuck as being housed in part of the jail that was referred to as \u201cthe back 40,\u201d a slang term originally used by farmers to refer to a remote piece of land.<\/p>\n

Another deputy said people held there could easily be forgotten during routine safety checks.<\/p>\n

Schuck had been arrested on March 10 after a car accident for being under the influence of drugs and in possession of a controlled substance. He was placed in a temporary holding cell without a mattress, where he remained for nearly five days.<\/p>\n

A deputy who escorted Schuck back from court the day before he died said he had to physically guide Schuck to keep him from wandering. Another recalled Schuck slurring the word \u201cthirsty\u201d and being unable to stand without help. Despite that, he was not taken to the jail\u2019s infirmary.<\/p>\n

Other footage from that day showed Schuck collapsing twice as he was being moved to a different cell. He was found unresponsive the next morning, March 16.<\/p>\n

An autopsy concluded he died from complications of drug intoxication, with dehydration listed as a contributing factor. A medical expert hired by the family said severe dehydration was the primary cause of death.<\/p>\n

The report also described bruises, scrapes and open sores across his chest, back, arms and legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe circumstances of this case strongly raise the inference that Hayden was forgotten about in that cell,\u201d said attorney Lauren Mellano.<\/p>\n

As a sanction, Sabraw agreed with Goddard\u2019s recommendation that jurors be allowed to draw an \u201cadverse inference\u201d \u2014 meaning they may, but are not required to, assume the missing video would have been unfavorable to the county.<\/p>\n

Both sides were ordered to meet and confer on the specific wording of the jury instruction.<\/p>\n

Sabraw called the remedy \u201cmeasured and fair,\u201d noting it still gives the county room to argue its position at trial. He rejected the county\u2019s request to let jurors first decide whether the video were destroyed intentionally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of speculation as to what it would have shown or not shown,\u201d he said. \u201cBut what also seems clear is the position of that camera, it would have depicted passersby, comers and goers in the jail, whether it\u2019s deputies, medical staff, whoever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inman told Sabraw that deputies in the jails are now equipped with body-worn cameras and that footage is stored indefinitely. Sabraw said that\u2019s an important step but doesn\u2019t change the court\u2019s obligation to address what happened in this case.<\/p>\n

Goddard also granted the plaintiff\u2019s request for attorneys\u2019 fees tied to the sanctions motion. Sabraw sent that issue back to her to determine the amount.<\/p>\n

The case is headed to trial unless the county agrees to settle. Last month, Sabraw refused to dismiss<\/a> the family\u2019s lawsuit \u2014 one of at least 19 the county is currently facing over jail deaths \u2014 saying there was enough evidence of possible negligence.<\/p>\n

At Thursday\u2019s hearing, Inman said the Board of Supervisors is expected to consider the family\u2019s latest settlement proposal later this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has sanctioned San Diego County for failing to preserve jail video footage that could have…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":292586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,356,5295,728,50,3549,7264,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,9235],"class_list":{"0":"post-292585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-san-diego","16":"tag-sandiego","17":"tag-top-stories-sdut","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa","24":"tag-watchdog"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}