Pubdate: Sun, 22 Jan 2006
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2006 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Scott Herhold, Mercury News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

NEW DETAILS, NEW QUESTIONS IN JAIL DEATH

"Scott, if you can hear me, open your eyes," said the San Jose
fireman to the man handcuffed to the gurney. "It's the fire
department. Open your eyes. Scott, can you open your eyes for me?"

It was a poignant moment, a last appeal for consciousness, before an
ambulance took Scott James Marino from the Santa Clara County Jail to
Valley Medical Center.

The time was about 9:10 p.m. on Aug. 21, 2004. The hulking 33-year-old
Marino never opened his eyes for the fireman. He never regained
consciousness. Six weeks later, he died at VMC.

Scott Marino was addicted to methamphetamine, perhaps the most
dangerous of cocktails. A coroner's report attributed his death partly
to the drugs in his system. He was a difficult inmate -- a difficult
man -- with 19 arrests in Santa Clara County in the previous 11 years.

Yet his death was no straightforward matter. It came partly at the
hands of corrections officers, who struggled to control Marino in a
sixth-floor holding room after they spotted him with a glass vial.
They reported later that they acted for his safety. But when they were
done saving him, he wasn't breathing.

I first raised questions about why Marino died in a column in November
2004. Having since read the officers' reports and viewed a jail
videotape produced in the family's lawsuit against the county, I know
more details. But I only have more questions. Here's the story, drawn
from the official records:

At 1:30 in the morning of Aug. 20, the patience of John and Marie
Marino, Scott's parents, finally gave out. Worried that their son was
hallucinating and high on meth, they called San Jose police to take
him to jail.

Over the next 24 hours, it became clear that Marino was not a popular
inmate. Other prisoners reported that he cleaned the windows of the
inmate worker dorm with sour milk, leaving a stench.

Isolated in Cell

On the evening of the 21st, Marino was moved to a holding room on the
jail's sixth floor with one other inmate. Shortly before 8:30 that
night, corrections officer Dianne Lipscomb attempted to move him to be
by himself in nearby Room 6A.

Upset that he couldn't take his property bag with him, Marino pushed
back. With the help of another officer, Lipscomb managed to get the
door closed behind the 6-foot-2, 220-pound inmate.

As officers looked through the window, Marino acted -- in their words
- -- bizarrely. He pointed at the ceiling. He put a blanket on as a
poncho. He refused to obey their commands.

At one point, the officers said, they spotted Marino reaching down to
pick up several pieces of broken glass, apparently from a small
bottle. He pushed the glass underneath the door toward the corrections
officers.

(Later, officials theorized the bottle contained urine: For meth
addicts, drinking urine is one way to recycle the drug. A strip search
missed the vial.)

Twice, the officers opened the door and delivered pepper spray blasts
almost directly into Marino's face, without visible effect. In a
report later, Sgt. Dan Woods wrote that he believed "Marino posed a
danger to himself." So the officers decided to remove Marino from the
cell by force.

When they opened the door, Marino -- by their account -- dived under
the protective shield held by one officer. At least five officers
wrestled with him. The reports said the officer with the shield
pressed it down on Marino's back.

Still high on meth, Marino had almost superhuman strength, kicking and
yelling. It took a couple of officers just to contain one of his arms
before he was subdued.

When the officers turned him onto his side two or three minutes later,
they noticed that Marino's face was blue and he was not breathing.

Videotape Begins

It's not long after this point -- roughly 8:45 p.m. -- that an officer
began recording the scene with a hand-held video camera. It showed an
unconscious Marino in the hallway, lying on his back. For a couple of
minutes, corrections officers poked at his chest. There was no
sustained attempt at CPR until one officer, fiddling with a
mouthpiece, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The jail nurses
arrived at 8:50, a full nine minutes after they were summoned.

Finally, nurses and paramedics reestablished a pulse. But Marino had
suffered irreparable brain injury. After Valley Medical Center doctors
pulled the plug with the family's consent, he died Oct. 1.

As Marino was wheeled out of the jail, however, the videotape caught
an intriguing remark by an unidentified corrections officer.
"Dogpiled," the officer said. "I'd say at least a couple of minutes
before he was restrained."

The incident raises at least three areas of question:

A) What was the urgency in removing Marino from a locked room?
Assistant County Counsel Winifred Botha said the officers became
"very concerned" about Marino's safety when they saw the broken
glass -- and there was no immediate reason to summon the nurses. "His
behavior was volatile and unpredictable," she said. "The officers
did not know what he was going to do next."

The sheriff's deputies I've talked with say the jailers should at
least have had medical backup ready. A nurse reported she was on the
floor earlier to check on Marino when he was pepper-sprayed -- and was
then told to return to her station.

"What this boils down to is that he pissed them off," says Scott's
father, John, who has law enforcement experience. "He was confined.
Any good sergeant would say, 'Hey, what am I going to do with him when
I get him out?' "

B) Was there a dogpile? The Marino family has argued that Marino died
because he had the air squeezed out of him. County officials have
insisted, however, that there was not a dogpile. "I think it was an
unfortunate choice of words," Botha said. "What happened was not
something you could call a dogpile. There was one officer for each arm
and leg."

It seems clear the term was used in the jail that night. But the
videotape provides no direct evidence of what happened. It begins only
after Marino is unconscious, a fact that doesn't help the county's
case. (The county will not talk about its standard videotaping policy,
saying it's classified.)

C) Did the corrections officers understand the effects of the pepper
spray? And how well-versed were they in CPR? Citing possible medical
effects of pepper spray, the sheriff's department "general orders,"
which also apply to deputies working in the jail, warn against
transporting a prisoner face-down after spraying.

Botha says the corrections officers, who are in a different
department, have no restriction against transporting a pepper-sprayed
inmate.

Still, you have to wonder if the officers understood the risks of
holding a man down on his stomach after the spraying. The apparent
lack of urgency in CPR suggests they were more worried about
protecting themselves.

Lawsuits exist partly to answer these questions. They do so in a way
that's terribly unsatisfying to the public. If the county is at fault,
it pays quietly. In the Marino case, it's worth speaking out loud.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake