Inmate Dies of Cancer in Orange County, Shackled to His Deathbed

Officials of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and coroner’s office launched inquiries Thursday into the death earlier this week of a liver cancer patient at the Orange County Jail who died while shackled to a hospital bed.

Donald F. Arbiso, 41, remained shackled with a uniformed sheriff’s guard posted outside his room in the jail wing of UC Irvine Medical Center despite anguished pleas from his family to unshackle him so he could die with dignity.

The Costa Mesa man had been in custody on charges of attempted murder and was set to go to trial last week, but his case was postponed when he became hospitalized and was diagnosed as having inoperable liver cancer.

Sheriff’s officials said the shackling is a routine safeguard for prisoners in the jail wing of the hospital. 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,” fumed his mother, Jennie Arbiso of Costa Mesa. “I think it’s inhuman.”

Fellow inmate Thomas Frank Maniscalco, awaiting trial on murder charges, said Arbiso had complained throughout his 13 months in the county jail about not getting proper medical care for a chronic liver condition, which jail doctors said was caused by Arbiso’s longtime heroin and alcohol use.

Just last week, Maniscalco said, Arbiso was confined to his cell and lost his television privileges for two days because he was late for morning roll call. Maniscalco said Arbiso was late because he had undergone a liver biopsy the previous day and was in severe pain.

“It was an institutional murder,” Maniscalco said.

County officials denied mistreating Arbiso. Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Richard Olson said Thursday that the county would review the Arbiso case. Beyond that, he would not comment.

The county had also refused Arbiso’s request for a liver transplant, saying that a diagnosis showed he did not need one. Arbiso complained in papers filed with the state’s 4th District Court of Appeal that he had been denied proper medical treatment in the jail.

“I am suffering a failing liver,” Arbiso said in his February court petition. “In fact, I am dying.”

In response to the petition, the county said jail doctors had examined Arbiso numerous times and never found the need for a liver transplant. Before the appellate court could rule on the matter, the transplant issue became moot. On Monday, Arbiso was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed as having liver cancer with only days to live.

On Monday and Tuesday, Arbiso’s court-appointed lawyers worked frantically to free him from custody so he could spend his last days as a free man. On Tuesday afternoon, however, Arbiso slipped into a coma and died later that night.

Family Farewell

Arbiso’s family had gathered around his bedside Tuesday to say goodby. His mother said that her daughter and a niece asked a jail deputy to unshackle Arbiso. She said the deputy replied that he was under orders not to do so.

Although the deputy did bend the rules by allowing family members inside the hospital room rather than making them stand outside, they remained deeply troubled by the shackles.

“Those last few days, I saw no reason to have those on,” said his mother. “He was alive, but just barely.”

Other jail inmates said prisoners are commonly shackled in the Orange County Jail for humiliation purposes. Maniscalco claims that shackling is also used as punishment for such offenses as smoking in the hallways.

ACLU attorney Dick Hermann said his office will review circumstances of Arbiso’s death and, if serious medical care problems are found, will refer the case to U.S. District Judge William P. Gray of Los Angeles, who has been monitoring problems in the Orange County Jail.

3 Died in ’87

Medical care in the 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 shared with Jerry Thomas Pick, 23. Arthur Oviedo, 25, was strangled Jan. 31, 1987, in another isolation cell, which he also shared with Pick, prosecutors said. Juan Ceja, 27, tried to hang himself on March 8, 1987, after being left alone in a cell. He died a week later.

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