Corcoran Guards Mute in Probe of Inmate Death

An investigation into the Feb. 2 bleeding death of an inmate at Corcoran State Prison has been hindered by correctional officers who have refused to give details about the incident, authorities said.

Guards who initially seemed willing to cooperate in the probe have decided to keep quiet after meeting with union representatives and union attorneys, authorities said. Nearly every officer working in the section where inmate Ronald Herrera bled to death in his cell last month has refused to talk to the Kings County district attorney’s office.

Herrera, a 58-year-old dialysis patient, died from an opening in his medical shunt after he screamed and kicked for hours in his cell without any intervention from the staff, according to corrections officials. Many of the 40 or so guards keeping silent are not suspects but witnesses, said the chief prosecutor leading the probe.

He said the silence had effectively blocked the monthlong investigation into possible criminal neglect.

“We need to interview a lot of people and, so far, we’ve had an awful lot of people refuse to talk to us,” said Patrick Hart, the chief deputy district attorney. “They’ve all retained union attorneys who’ve advised them not to talk.”

Union leaders did not respond to four requests for interviews over a weeklong period.

Hart said only a dozen officers out of the potential pool of 40 to 50 had made statements to county investigators. But because these officers are all peripheral witnesses at best, he said, their statements have little evidentiary value. Hart said he was miffed by the union.

“Someone from the union in Sacramento was supposed to call me and discuss the cooperation of witnesses,” Hart said. “But I haven’t heard from them yet. I’m assuming from all the refusals to talk that no one is going to be coming forward with voluntary statements.”

In the face of silence, he said, the district attorney’s office may take the matter to a special grand jury. “We’re going to put the timelines and records together and figure out where we’re going next. I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

The investigation follows by weeks criticism in Sacramento that the union has fostered a “code of silence” as a way to protect rogue guards and cover up wrongdoing.

Last month, Mike Jimenez, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., dismissed the criticism. He told a state Senate hearing on prison reform that guards who keep silent in the face of misconduct are cowards. In a written statement, he said the organization called for “an end to the ‘code of silence’ or, as we prefer to call it, the ‘code of cowardice.’ ”

The state senator who shared leadership at the hearing said union leaders had pretended to play along with talk of reform but pursued an entirely different tactic when the code of silence was practiced in the field.

When told of investigators’ problems at Corcoran, Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) said, “I cannot reconcile Mr. Jimenez’s rhetoric with his actions. On one hand, he calls the code of silence a ‘code of cowardice.’ And yet the union’s message to its members, at least sub rosa, is ‘don’t talk, don’t cooperate.’ ”

Guards suspected of wrongdoing are entitled to invoke their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, authorities said. But corrections officers who merely witness wrongdoing and keep quiet out of a sense of loyalty have a much higher legal burden in asserting such rights.

One Fresno attorney hired by the union to represent 12 officers disputed the district attorney’s portrayal of the guards’ conduct. He said his clients were willing to cooperate if certain ground rules could be established. If prosecutors decide to tape the statements, he said, his clients want to use their own recorders to tape the statements too.

“If they agree to this, then my clients will talk,” said attorney Eric Fogderude, who said he believes the death was a suicide and that staff efforts to save Herrera had been “valiant.”

But Hart called the dispute over tape recorders a red herring. “It’s a lot more than that. And they know our concern. If we tape and they tape and then they tamper with their tape, you’ll never figure out whose tape is accurate.”

The Kings County coroner has not ruled the death a suicide. According to corrections officials, guards failed to respond to Herrera’s repeated shouts as he bled to death in his cell over an eight-hour period that began Super Bowl Sunday and ended the next morning. Nearly all the blood had drained from his body through an opening in a shunt attached to his chest. What caused the shunt’s cap to come off may never be known.

Top prison officials, responding to legislative concern over the code of silence, have in recent weeks underscored a guard’s duty to report wrongdoing. In a memo last month to all correctional staff members, Roderick Q. Hickman, secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, called for “zero tolerance regarding the code of silence.”

“We will not tolerate any form of silence as it pertains to misconduct, unethical or illegal behavior,” Hickman wrote in a Feb. 17 memo. “Any employee ... who acts in a manner that fosters the code of silence shall be subject to discipline up to and including termination.”

On Wednesday, Hickman took the unusual step of visiting Corcoran State Prison to discuss recent problems there. Hickman spokesman Tip Kindel said the secretary would not comment on the district attorney’s probe except to repeat his general call for officers to cooperate.

The Corcoran case is the latest example of accusations that the powerful guards union has blocked criminal and administrative investigations at state prisons over the past decade.

In the past, union officials have defended the practice of providing guards with legal counsel in the early stages of an alleged crime or alleged coverup. They have described such tactics as a tough but lawful defense of their members.

Where due process ends and obstruction of justice begins is not always easy to determine, prosecutors say. As a general rule, the line would be crossed if officer witnesses are willing to cooperate with authorities but are then intimidated into silence by union representatives and union-hired attorneys.

For the first time, the district attorney’s office provided a timeline of Herrera’s death. But it remains incomplete because of a lack of details from correctional employees.

Herrera, a career criminal who had spent much of the last 40 years behind bars on a variety of convictions, including rape, refused to leave the shower sometime in the early evening of Feb. 1.

Guards on the third watch were about to remove him from the shower when he finally relented and was placed in his cell. Hart said he was unsure whether guards had been watching the Super Bowl game at the time or whether the game had been a distraction.

Herrera, who suffered from hepatitis, began to howl inside his cell sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., Hart said. His distress continued through the night as he kicked at his cell door. Some staff members were concerned, but superior officers told them not to bother looking in on Herrera, corrections officials said.

At one point, Herrera smeared his cell window with blood, but it wasn’t until the next morning, about eight hours after he began howling, that a guard opened the cell. He found Herrera slumped over on the ground, dead. Blood filled the toilet bowl and washed over the cement floor. The shunt’s cap was off and was found on a top bunk.

A few days later, after a Times story highlighted questions surrounding the death, attorneys in Fresno began getting calls from union officials and lawyers in Sacramento. They were told that numerous guards needed to be represented because prosecutors 50 miles away in Kings County, where the prison is located, were pursuing a probe into possible criminal neglect.

One by one, prosecutors said, important witnesses approached by county investigators refused to talk, citing the advice of the union-hired lawyers.

One attorney said her client, a peripheral witness, had agreed to cooperate because he had been influenced, in part, by Hickman’s “zero tolerance” memo.

“Did we get marching orders from the union not to talk? I haven’t been instructed by the CCPOA not to cooperate, but they wanted him to have legal representation,” said the attorney, who requested anonymity to protect her client’s identity.

If witnesses refuse to cooperate with prosecutors, a warden can call them individually into his office and remind them of their legal and ethical duty to report misconduct. In the Herrera case, officials said, Corcoran Warden Al Scribner has so far chosen not to do this.

Herrera’s mother said she hoped guards would do the right thing and come forward. “He cried and screamed, but they pretended not to hear him,” said Francis Goena, 82. “They didn’t even bother to check on him. They let him die like an animal.”