Inmate Died Shackled to Bed Despite Family’s Protests : Cancer Victim’s Wish: Death in Non-Jail Ward

Don Arbiso had just one last wish: to be a free man before he died.

Arbiso, 41, of Costa Mesa never had that wish fulfilled. On Tuesday night, the Orange County Jail inmate died of inoperable liver cancer while still shackled to a hospital bed. A uniformed sheriff’s deputy was stationed outside just in case Arbiso, who for 13 months had been awaiting trial on an attempted murder charge, could somehow muster the strength to try to escape.

But Arbiso, in his final days, barely had strength to sit up and speak. On his last day, he lapsed into a coma. Family members said that despite their anguished protests, sheriff’s officials kept Arbiso’s ankle shackled to the bed at the County Jail’s medical wing at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Sheriff’s spokesman Richard Olson called the security measures a routine precaution against escape. Arbiso’s friends and family called it cruel and inhumane.

“To still handcuff a man you know can’t possibly go anywhere or do anything is pathetic,” said his mother, Jennie Arbiso of Costa Mesa. “I think it’s inhuman.”

Fellow inmate Thomas Frank Maniscalco, awaiting trial on triple murder charges, said Arbiso had complained for months about not getting proper medical treatment for his chronic liver condition.

“It was an institutional murder,” Maniscalco charged.

County officials denied the charges of improper treatment.

Before his death, court-appointed lawyers had worked frantically to grant Arbiso’s last wish. His private investigator, Larry Crandall, on Tuesday afternoon was arranging to have medical documents rushed over to the district attorney’s office to prove that Arbiso was dying of cancer. Crandall said the district attorney’s office was going to make a decision on whether to release Arbiso after receiving the documents.

But on Tuesday, it was evident that those efforts had come too late. After meeting with his family one last time, Arbiso slipped into unconsciousness. At 11:28 p.m., doctors at the medical center pronounced Arbiso dead.

Arbiso’s mother, a sister and some other family members who went to the hospital to say goodby said Arbiso no longer had the strength to speak Tuesday morning.

“He’s real weak. He could only squeeze my hand,”

cousin Jim Orate, 42, of Rancho Cucamonga said moments after visiting Arbiso Tuesday. “He’s hardly even responding.”

Arbiso’s sister, Carolyn Vela, 43, of Hawaiian Gardens, said her brother told her this week that he wanted to be released from custody and transferred to a bed in the non-jail part of the hospital.

Addressing her mother in a hospital lobby Tuesday, Vela said: “He wanted to get out of jail and see you guys (his mother and father) before he died, and make it right with you guys for all he had done. He knew he was dying.”

His mother said that her daughter and a niece asked a deputy on guard to unshackle Arbiso. She said the deputy replied that he did not have authorization to do so. Sheriff’s spokesman Olson said the deputy was following proper procedures.

Jennie Arbiso said a nurse did heed the family’s request to place a foam pad under her son’s shackled ankle so it would be more comfortable.

Crandall said the deputy also bent rules by allowing family members to congregate around the inmate’s bed, rather than being forced to stand outside and talk through a portal.

Still, the family remained deeply troubled over the fact that the dying Arbiso was shackled.

“Those last few days, I saw no reason to have those on,” said his mother. “He was alive, but just barely. It was very disturbing. Something should be done about that. The rules should be changed for such an instance.”

Olson encouraged the family to contact the Sheriff’s Department if they had a problem with Arbiso’s shackling. Jennie Arbiso said she was too upset Wednesday to decide what to do.

Jennie Arbiso said her son, the youngest of three siblings, had been in and out of trouble for most of his adult life because of heroin addiction. Jail medical officials said they had also diagnosed Arbiso as an alcoholic.

On March 20, 1987, Arbiso stabbed a family friend during a fight, Crandall said. Although Arbiso claimed he was fending off the man’s attack with a car piston, he was booked into County Jail on suspicion of attempted murder. He remained there, unable to post bond.

He was set to go to trial last week, but the case was postponed after Arbiso was admitted to the hospital for treatment of chronic liver problems. Doctors said the ailments resulted from his drinking and intravenous drug use.

In February, Arbiso petitioned the state 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana to order jail officials to allow him to undergo a liver transplant operation.

“I am suffering a failing liver,” he said in the petition. “In fact, I am dying.”

Arbiso also complained that he had been given inadequate medical treatment in the jail. Inmate Maniscalco, 43, a lawyer, filed a letter supporting Arbiso’s allegations, contending that Orange County Jail inmates were commonly denied proper medical treatment. Maniscalco alleged that, among other things, Arbiso was denied proper medication and was put on a starch-heavy diet, which is detrimental to the liver.

In March, the appellate court, saying that Arbiso’s petition “may have merit,” directed county officials to respond to the liver transplant request and the allegations of improper treatment.

Dr. Josephine Meador, the jail’s acting medical director, told the court that Arbiso had been seen by a physician at least once every month and sometimes as frequently as four times a month, and that blood tests had revealed a “steady, slow” progression of the liver disease.

Arbiso was re-evaluated by the jail’s medical staff on April 28 and doctors did not recommend any therapy beyond what was being provided, Meador told the court. She added that doctors did not mention a need for a liver transplant.

The sheriff’s position then was stated by Deputy County Counsel Wanda S. Florence, who told the court: “In a nutshell, it is clear that Mr. Arbiso’s allegations . . . are based upon unfounded opinion.”

Arbiso’s liver transplant request became a moot issue on Monday when a biopsy revealed that Arbiso had liver cancer, Crandall said. Doctors at the hospital said a liver transplant would do no good because the cancer in Arbiso’s body would attack the new liver as well, Crandall said.

Dr. John Hoefs, one of the physicians attending Arbiso, said Tuesday: “He certainly doesn’t have much time.”

Medical care in the County Jail came under attack last year after three inmates died in the medical ward. John Franklin Wilcox, 71, died Jan. 17, 1987, after a beating in an isolation cell he shared with Jerry Thomas Pick, 23. Arthur Oviedo, 25, was strangled Jan. 31, 1987, in another isolation cell which he also shared with Pick, according to prosecutors. Juan Ceja, 27, hanged himself March 8, 1987, after being left alone in a cell. He died a week later.

Pick is to stand trial in August in the Wilcox and Oviedo deaths.

Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union later said that all three inmates would be alive today if they had been housed at a new intake-and-release center, which is designed so that a deputy can sit on a raised platform and look down on all the cells. Many of the cells in the medical ward at the regular men’s jail are out of sight of a deputy’s station.

Lawsuits have also been filed by families of Wilcox and Oviedo, challenging the quality of jail medical care.

Jail officials have agreed that the new intake-and-release center, opened earlier this year, provides a safer environment but disagreed that deputies could have responded quickly enough to save all three men.

Maniscalco said that Arbiso wanted to live long enough to testify before the Court of Appeal about the jail’s medical conditions.

“It was Donny’s greatest hope,” Maniscalco said, “that the case would be heard so this wouldn’t happen to someone else.”