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"Scott, if you can hear me, open your eyes," said the San Jose fireman to the man handcuffed to the gurney. "It's the fire department. Open your eyes. Scott, can you open your eyes for me?" It was a poignant moment, a last appeal for consciousness, before an ambulance took Scott James Marino from the Santa Clara County Jail to Valley Medical Center. The time was about 9:10 p.m. on Aug. 21, 2004. The hulking 33-year-old Marino never opened his eyes for the fireman. He never regained consciousness. Six weeks later, he died at VMC. Scott Marino was addicted to methamphetamine, perhaps the most dangerous of cocktails. A coroner's report attributed his death partly to the drugs in his system. He was a difficult inmate -- a difficult man -- with 19 arrests in Santa Clara County in the previous 11 years. Yet his death was no straightforward matter. It came partly at the hands of corrections officers, who struggled to control Marino in a sixth-floor holding room after they spotted him with a glass vial. They reported later that they acted for his safety. But when they were done saving him, he wasn't breathing. I first raised questions about why Marino died in a column in November 2004. Having since read the officers' reports and viewed a jail videotape produced in the family's lawsuit against the county, I know more details. But I only have more questions. Here's the story, drawn from the official records: At 1:30 in the morning of Aug. 20, the patience of John and Marie Marino, Scott's parents, finally gave out. Worried that their son was hallucinating and high on meth, they called San Jose police to take him to jail. Over the next 24 hours, it became clear that Marino was not a popular inmate. Other prisoners reported that he cleaned the windows of the inmate worker dorm with sour milk, leaving a stench. Isolated in Cell On the evening of the 21st, Marino was moved to a holding room on the jail's sixth floor with one other inmate. Shortly before 8:30 that night, corrections officer Dianne Lipscomb attempted to move him to be by himself in nearby Room 6A. Upset that he couldn't take his property bag with him, Marino pushed back. With the help of another officer, Lipscomb managed to get the door closed behind the 6-foot-2, 220-pound inmate. As officers looked through the window, Marino acted -- in their words - -- bizarrely. He pointed at the ceiling. He put a blanket on as a poncho. He refused to obey their commands. At one point, the officers said, they spotted Marino reaching down to pick up several pieces of broken glass, apparently from a small bottle. He pushed the glass underneath the door toward the corrections officers. (Later, officials theorized the bottle contained urine: For meth addicts, drinking urine is one way to recycle the drug. A strip search missed the vial.) Twice, the officers opened the door and delivered pepper spray blasts almost directly into Marino's face, without visible effect. In a report later, Sgt. Dan Woods wrote that he believed "Marino posed a danger to himself." So the officers decided to remove Marino from the cell by force. When they opened the door, Marino -- by their account -- dived under the protective shield held by one officer. At least five officers wrestled with him. The reports said the officer with the shield pressed it down on Marino's back. Still high on meth, Marino had almost superhuman strength, kicking and yelling. It took a couple of officers just to contain one of his arms before he was subdued. When the officers turned him onto his side two or three minutes later, they noticed that Marino's face was blue and he was not breathing. Videotape Begins It's not long after this point -- roughly 8:45 p.m. -- that an officer began recording the scene with a hand-held video camera. It showed an unconscious Marino in the hallway, lying on his back. For a couple of minutes, corrections officers poked at his chest. There was no sustained attempt at CPR until one officer, fiddling with a mouthpiece, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The jail nurses arrived at 8:50, a full nine minutes after they were summoned. Finally, nurses and paramedics reestablished a pulse. But Marino had suffered irreparable brain injury. After Valley Medical Center doctors pulled the plug with the family's consent, he died Oct. 1. As Marino was wheeled out of the jail, however, the videotape caught an intriguing remark by an unidentified corrections officer. "Dogpiled," the officer said. "I'd say at least a couple of minutes before he was restrained." The incident raises at least three areas of question: A) What was the urgency in removing Marino from a locked room? Assistant County Counsel Winifred Botha said the officers became "very concerned" about Marino's safety when they saw the broken glass -- and there was no immediate reason to summon the nurses. "His behavior was volatile and unpredictable," she said. "The officers did not know what he was going to do next." The sheriff's deputies I've talked with say the jailers should at least have had medical backup ready. A nurse reported she was on the floor earlier to check on Marino when he was pepper-sprayed -- and was then told to return to her station. "What this boils down to is that he pissed them off," says Scott's father, John, who has law enforcement experience. "He was confined. Any good sergeant would say, 'Hey, what am I going to do with him when I get him out?' " B) Was there a dogpile? The Marino family has argued that Marino died because he had the air squeezed out of him. County officials have insisted, however, that there was not a dogpile. "I think it was an unfortunate choice of words," Botha said. "What happened was not something you could call a dogpile. There was one officer for each arm and leg." It seems clear the term was used in the jail that night. But the videotape provides no direct evidence of what happened. It begins only after Marino is unconscious, a fact that doesn't help the county's case. (The county will not talk about its standard videotaping policy, saying it's classified.) C) Did the corrections officers understand the effects of the pepper spray? And how well-versed were they in CPR? Citing possible medical effects of pepper spray, the sheriff's department "general orders," which also apply to deputies working in the jail, warn against transporting a prisoner face-down after spraying. Botha says the corrections officers, who are in a different department, have no restriction against transporting a pepper-sprayed inmate. Still, you have to wonder if the officers understood the risks of holding a man down on his stomach after the spraying. The apparent lack of urgency in CPR suggests they were more worried about protecting themselves. Lawsuits exist partly to answer these questions. They do so in a way that's terribly unsatisfying to the public. If the county is at fault, it pays quietly. In the Marino case, it's worth speaking out loud. |
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