Probe of fatal O.C. jail beating set

The Orange County district attorney’s office announced Thursday that it had impaneled a special grand jury to investigate the death of a man beaten by fellow inmates at a county jail after guards allegedly told them erroneously he was accused of child molestation.

In the first slaying in a county jail in 20 years, John Chamberlain, 41, was killed Oct. 5 at Theo Lacy Jail in Orange. About 20 inmates attacked Chamberlain in the showers and then dragged him, apparently unnoticed by guards, to another section of the jail, where the beating continued.

After finishing, a sheriff’s official told The Times, the inmates had time to wash their jumpsuits to get rid of blood and other evidence before an inmate notified a guard of the attack.

Chamberlain, a Mission Viejo computer technician, had been charged with possession of child pornography.

A $20-million wrongful-death claim by his father said guards had allowed influential inmates to review paperwork outlining the charges and mistakenly told inmates he was a molester.

Six current and former jail inmates have been charged with murder in the case.

Sources familiar with the case previously said that Chamberlain was worried for his safety and that his attorney called a sheriff’s deputy to ask for a transfer. The attack began about five hours later as a crowd gathered around the television in the jail’s common room to watch the second game of the Dodgers’ playoff series against the Mets.

The district attorney’s office issued a statement Thursday saying the grand jury had been impaneled to conduct a “very thorough investigation of all the circumstances surrounding that death” with the full cooperation of all agencies involved.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to offer further details and would not explain why the office had taken seven months to bring the case to a grand jury. It was not clear whether the grand jury could bring indictments or was just a fact-finding body.

Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona said he welcomed the investigation.

“It’s a great idea,” Carona said. “I think it’s completely appropriate for the grand jury to investigate this. We do a very thorough internal investigation, and if we find culpability, we move on it, [but] when you have something this impactful involving such a complicated issue, the best thing is to ask the grand jury to examine it.”

He said the investigation, which could take several months, could result in recommended changes at the jail and make findings regarding culpability.

“They have the ability not only to look at all the documentation but to look into the deputies’ files and subpoena witnesses,” Carona said

The Sheriff’s Department investigated the death despite a 20-year-old policy of referring jail deaths immediately to the district attorney’s office because of possible conflicts of interest.

At least one other inmate, Fernando Ramirez, who was awaiting trial on charges of child molestation, has been severely beaten at the county’s Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana. He was released last year after five months in the hospital and, according to his family, has suffered brain damage.

Orange County’s jail system was the only one among the state’s five largest that did not automatically give protective custody to inmates accused of sex crimes involving children. After Chamberlain’s death, the public defender’s office asked for more responsiveness, and sheriff’s officials agreed to provide a 24-hour contact number for defense attorneys to call them, Jane Wilkinson, a senior assistant public defender, has said.

david.haldane@latimes.com