Cell Mate Is Charged With Murder in 2 Deaths in Jail’s Medical Ward

Clearing the sheriff’s staff of blame, the district attorney has filed murder charges against a cell mate of two men who died in recent weeks in separate incidents in the medical ward of the Orange County Jail.

Jerry T. Pick, 23, who was arrested Jan. 4 in Garden Grove on suspicion of purse snatching, is scheduled to be arraigned in Central Municipal Court in Santa Ana Monday on two murder charges, plus a special-circumstance allegation of multiple murder. The multiple-murder allegation could result in a sentence of life in prison without parole if he is convicted.

Pick is accused of killing John F. Wilcox, 71, on Jan. 17 and Arthur Oviedo, 25, on Jan. 31 in medical isolation cells on the second floor of the men’s jail in Santa Ana.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown said the initial autopsy in the Wilcox case, conducted by an independent pathologist not associated with Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates’ office, showed that he died of emphysema. Broken ribs were found, but, according to medical reports, a paramedic said he heard a bone break as he tried to revive Wilcox.

The sheriff’s staff, which is responsible for assigning inmates in the jail’s medical ward to cells, therefore had no reason to believe it was dangerous to house Pick with other patients, Brown said.

“With the information the sheriff had, there was no way he could have known that Mr. Wilcox had died of anything but natural causes,” Brown said. “Our investigation shows absolutely no negligence on the part of anyone at the sheriff’s office.”

But that position was attacked by Richard P. Herman, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who has led the federal court fight for improvement in jail conditions. The ACLU is also looking into the two recent jail deaths as part of its federal case.

“Of course,” Herman said sardonically when informed that Gates had been cleared by prosecutors. “You knew the district attorney would not go after the sheriff. But the fact is, the jail people knew that Wilcox had been beaten up just a short time before.”

Wilcox’s family has said he complained to them about an attack by a cell mate. But it’s unclear whether it was reported to jail officials.

Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Richard Olson said Gates and his staff would not answer questions about the two jail deaths because an investigation by the Coroner’s Liaison Committee is still pending.

Frank Madrigal, administrator of jail medical facilities, has declined to discuss why any of the three men involved--Wilcox, Ovieda and Pick--were in medical isolation, except to verify that it was not because of jail overcrowding.

Wilcox, who was jailed on a probation violation, was found dead in his jail bed. Under a policy ordered by the Board of Supervisors, all jail deaths are investigated by the district attorney’s office. Wilcox’s autopsy was conducted by a forensic pathologist from Stockton.

It wasn’t until after Oviedo was found strangled in his cell on Jan. 31 that prosecutors became concerned that Pick might be involved in both deaths. He had been alone in the cell with Oviedo and had been in a three-man cell with Wilcox.

Wilcox’s body was ordered exhumed and examined once again, this time by the county coroner’s office at the prosecutors’ request.

While Brown declined to give specifics about those findings, he said tests showed that Wilcox suffered injuries that apparently occurred at the jail and that were not apparent in the first autopsy. Though the official cause of death still is emphysema, prosecutors believe the underlying cause was a beating by Pick.

A native of Ohio who only recently moved to Southern California, Pick is now in a one-man cell at the jail. At present, he has no attorney.

The public defender’s office had represented him in the purse-snatching case, but Deputy Public Defender Michael P. Giannini said Friday that his office had declared a conflict of interest in the case two days earlier and no longer represented him.

Giannini said his office had solicited the opinion of an expert, who said that Pick has mental problems.

But Brown said there is nothing in Pick’s record to indicate any history of treatment for mental illness. He was not housed in the mental health section of the jail or diagnosed as a mental health case.

Gates has indicated to county health care officials, who run the medical floor of the jail, that he will ask the county to replace the low-visibility doors in the medical observation section with bars or plexiglass doors that would allow jail deputies better visibility into the cells.