Prisoners at the overcrowded
and understaffed Yuba County Jail have found formidable allies in law students
studying civil rights at UC Davis.
Last fall, three students from
the UC Davis School of Law’s renowned Civil Rights Clinic went before the
county grand jury with detailed findings on how the Marysville jail is run.
Among other criticisms, they said the jail has failed to provide treatment or
medication for mentally ill inmates and to protect prisoners from assault by
other inmates. The students’ role was made public in late May with the release
of the previously confidential grand jury report for 2014-15.
The prisoners didn’t set out to
get student help, but they needed representation when the Yuba County Counsel’s
Office moved in Sacramento federal court to dismiss a long-ignored consent
decree put in place in 1979 to govern the jail’s operation.
The California Rural Legal
Assistance lawyers who filed the 1976 lawsuit that led to the consent decree,
and who monitored how the Sheriff’s Department obeyed the document’s mandates,
had to abandon their roles as watchdogs in 1996 because of legal and economic
restrictions. So there was no enforcement of the decree’s terms for 18 years,
until the County Counsel’s Office filed its motion in 2013.
Consequently, the federal court
in Sacramento looked for a lawyer to represent the prisoners and reached out
last year to Carter “Cappy” White, the Civil Rights Clinic’s director and
supervising attorney, who agreed to take on the task. When you get White, you
get his students.
Over the next year and a half,
the students delved into the operations of the jail, interviewing scores of
prisoners.
Amanda Whitney – a 26-year-old
third-year law student from Bakersfield and one of nine students who have
worked on the case – conducted interviews with inmates, met with jail staff,
and pored over documents such as grievances and incident reports.
The experience was “incredibly
valuable,” she said, “in terms of learning practical skills and finding out
what the real world is like.”
The grand jury report says the
large number of inmates and their “complicated needs,” plus “the inadequacy of
the facility itself,” are a challenge to the staff of the jail.
That jury report, White said,
“confirms much of what we have learned about the need to improve access to
medical and mental health care at the jail.” He said attorneys and students
have found jail officials receptive to some suggestions about improvements but
resistant to others, citing budget limitations.
In response to the evidence
presented by the student lawyers, the grand jury recommended that the Yuba
County jail beef up medical and mental health care for prisons, in part by
having a full-time credentialed mental health counselor and a full-time
registered nurse available to handle their needs. It said the county should
reduce the use of a “rubber room” to contain mentally ill prisoners and avoid
delays in transferring prisoners to outside hospitals.
Shortcomings at the jail have
been noted for decades.
The underlying lawsuit
challenging conditions was eventually certified as a class action, and the
consent decree resolved most of the suit’s claims. While the decree remains in
place to this day, its mandate that each county grand jury be made aware of the
document and its terms has been ignored since the CRLA lawyers bowed out.
The 2014-15 grand jury reported
that it discovered the decree’s existence “through media reports regarding
another agency.” It then examined federal court records, learning that the Yuba
County counsel’s office knew of its legal obligation to supply a copy of the
decree to the jury but failed to do so, according to the report.
In the 2013 motion to terminate
the decree, John Vacek, Yuba County’s chief deputy counsel, wrote that while
the court-approved pact “may have made some sense in the 1970s, much of it is
as relevant today as bell bottom pants and disco music.”
Since the decree was adopted,
circumstances at the jail have changed. For example, when the suit was filed,
the design capacity for the jail was 150 and the staff numbered 19. There are
now 60 staff members and the building, renovated in 1995, is designed for 428
inmates.
White and his students stepped
in last year and vigorously opposed termination of the consent degree, noting
that past grand jury reports had described conditions and practices still not
in compliance with the decree, including how often inmates get clean underwear
and towels and have access to the exercise yard, how often unusable recreation
equipment is replaced, how often detoxification holding cells are cleaned, and
the frequency and response time of medical and dental care.
The Civil Rights Clinic’s team
also pointed out that the jail operates, in part, as a facility for federal
immigration detainees, and they are protected by the consent decree just like
all other prisoners. The county argued the opposite, saying that the Prison
Litigation Reform Act does not provide a basis for such protection.
U.S. District Judge Garland E.
Burrell Jr. granted time for White and his students to do some fact-finding. At
a second round of briefing, the clinic urged the judge to maintain the majority
of the decree, “at least in the areas of outdoor exercise, medical care, grievance
procedures, hygiene, and housing and safety.”
Burrell denied the dismissal
motion in April 2014, ruling that the county had failed “to demonstrate that
there are no ongoing constitutional violations” of the inmates’ rights. For
defending the motion, Burrell awarded attorneys’ fees and costs totaling $7,827
to White and his students, $6,192 of which were fees for the students’ labors.
The county appealed Burrell’s
rejection of its motion and his award of fees and costs. The 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals has stayed the awards appeal pending its decision on the
denial of the motion. The appeal will probably be decided next year.
After winning the first
critical round in district court, the students investigated further under
White’s guidance, monitored the jail’s operation and presented their findings
to the grand jury in November. It’s that jury’s report that was released in
May.
Whitney, the student who worked
on the case this past academic year, said she took away a realization of how
critical the need is for quality treatment of mentally ill inmates. “You read
about it a lot, but there’s no way you can understand the seriousness of the
problem unless you see it up close. People are getting hurt,” she said.
The civil rights clinic is one
of the reasons Whitney chose UC Davis to study law, she said. Without it, she
said, she “would never have known what jail is really like. It is something
that will stick with me the rest of my life.”
Carter “Cappy” White, director
of the UC Davis School of Law Civil Rights Clinic and its supervising attorney,
and two of his students submitted a 43-page brief in October to the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving conditions at the Yuba County
jail. Among their findings:
▪ Inmates are
consistently denied access to adequate medical care and inmates with serious
mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, have been
deprived of access to mental health services and medication.
▪ The jail has
failed to protect prisoners from assault by other inmates in entirely
preventable situations.
▪ Inmates are
subjected to an unreasonable risk of harm due to the fact that jail employees
fail to properly (check) and supervise cell blocks and housing units, and many jail
housing units lack a means for inmates to contact jail staff in case of medical
crisis or other emergency.
▪ Evidence
exists of unsanitary conditions, lack of access to outdoor exercise and
reprisals or retaliation against inmates who file grievances.
July 4, 2015
The
Sacramento Bee
By Denny
Walsh
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