Amid an ongoing California Department of Justice probe into a spate of inmate deaths in Riverside County jails in 2022, federal lawsuits against Sheriff Chad Bianco and his correctional deputies continue to stack up.
More than a half-dozen lawsuits have been filed in U.S. District Court in Riverside this year on behalf of inmates who died in Riverside County’s jail system, including three filed since Oct. 11 on behalf of the family members of deceased inmates Mark Spratt, Ulysses Munoz Ayala and Justin Kail, all of whom were housed at the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley, near Murrieta.
Another notable suit was filed Aug. 25 by the parents of Kaushal Niroula, a 41-year-old transgender woman who was beaten and strangled in her cell on Sept. 6, 2022. The suit claims it took correctional officers more than an hour to realize Niroula’s cellmate, convicted sex offender Ronald Sanchez, had attacked Niroula in their cell.
Most recent lawsuits
Spratt, 24, of Fontana was killed Jan. 12 after his cellmate, Micky Rodney Payne, allegedly brutally beat him and threw him over a second-story railing to the floor below in what was described as a racially motivated attack. Spratt later died at a hospital, according to the federal suit filed Oct. 12.
The day before Spratt was killed, the lawsuit alleges, Payne had complained during a telephone call that he was housed with a White inmate. Payne, 34, has been charged with murder and one misdemeanor count of battery on a peace officer in connection with the incident.
On Sept. 29, 2022, Ulysses Munoz Ayala, 39, of Corona allegedly was killed by inmate Erik Martinez, 30, during an altercation. Martinez, who was in jail facing murder and carjacking charges, was subsequently charged with murder in connection with Ayala’s death.
Ayala’s daughter filed the lawsuit Oct. 10, blaming a lack of security and supervision at the jail for the death of her father, who was awaiting sentencing for convictions on assault with a deadly weapon charges in two separate cases.
Another lawsuit filed on Oct. 11 alleges inmate Justin Kail, 31, of Winchester died of a fentanyl overdose at the jail on May 17, 2022. His mother, Sharon Kidd, alleges in the lawsuit that the Sheriff’s Department and correctional officers should have known that inmates were consuming narcotics, including fentanyl, “at an alarming rate which would cause death.”
Confession in Niroula’s killing
Sanchez was seen on surveillance video “high fiving” and shaking hands with other inmates after Niroula’s death, and he quickly confessed to killing her.
“He is dead. I killed him. There is nothing else to say,” Sanchez told a jail deputy after the killing, according to the lawsuit and a coroner’s investigation report.
Sanchez pleaded guilty to murdering Niroula during his arraignment on Sept. 19, 2022, and was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison.
Niroula had been facing a second trial for murder in connection with the 2008 stabbing death of wealthy Palm Springs art dealer Clifford Lambert in 2008. Niroula was HIV positive and identifying as a female at the time of her death.
In fact, Niroula’s transition was so far along that she had developed breasts, according to the lawsuit. A coroner’s investigation report also noted that Niroula’s medical records indicated proof of clinical treatment for gender transition to female.
The lawsuit noted that Niroula had been assisting state and federal authorities in uncovering illegal wiretapping at the county jails and was “mysteriously killed” three days before her trial.
Niroula had filed a civil rights complaint in federal court in May 2012 alleging a sheriff’s deputy illegally intercepted privileged calls between her and her attorney and distributed them to Daniel Carlos Garcia, another defendant in the Lambert murder case. Garcia acknowledged he had received the recorded telephone conversations and listened to all of them, court records show.
“I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that she was killed in such a violent and tragic manner three days before she was set to go to trial,” said Denisse Gastelum, the attorney representing Niroula’s parents in the lawsuit.
Niroula was convicted in 2012 of first-degree murder in connection with Lambert’s killing and sentenced to life in prison, but her conviction was overturned in 2018 due to judicial bias and homophobic comments made by the judge who presided over the trial.
Cellmate pairings blamed
Attorneys representing family members of Niroula and Spratt also allege that sheriff’s correctional officers did not properly classify the inmates they were paired up with as cellmates, which cost Niroula and Spratt their lives.
Spratt was in custody for an identify theft offense, but was housed with Payne, who had been charged with a laundry list of violent offenses for domestic violence, assaulting a peace officer and attempting to take the officer’s gun, the family’s lawsuit states. Niroula was housed with a violent male sex offender even though she was identifying as a female at the time of her death, according to his parents’ lawsuit.
DOJ investigation
For the past two years, the American Civil Liberties Union as well as activist and community groups have alleged excessive force by sheriff’s deputies and “inhuman conditions” at Riverside County jails.
In 2021, the ACLU and more than 30 groups sent a letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta demanding that his office investigate.
When 18 inmates died in Riverside County jails in 2022 — the highest number of inmate deaths since 2005 — the ACLU also demanded that the Board of State and Community Corrections step in to provide “immediate and necessary oversight” of the jail system.
In its Feb. 7 letter to the BSSC, the ACLU alleged the Riverside Sheriff’s Department “has a long track record of rampant abuse and inhumane conditions inside their jail facilities.”
Two weeks after the ACLU sent its letter to the BSCC, Bonta announced his office was launching an investigation.
Justice Department officials confirmed this week that its “pattern or practice investigation into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office” remains active and ongoing, but declined to comment further.
Sheriff responds
Sheriff Chad Bianco staunchly defends his department and the actions of his deputies and correctional officers. While he acknowledged that more inmates died in Riverside County jails than usual in 2022, he said the department’s average number of annual deaths is nine — in line with the average experienced by most county jails.
He called the sharp criticisms and calls for investigations into his department nothing more than a “political publicity stunt of the far left.”
“It’s all a huge, disgusting political game,” Bianco said in a telephone interview.
In 2022, Bianco said, the death rate among the general population in California was 684 per 100,000 people. In comparison, the death rate in Riverside County jails was 30 per 100,000 inmates
“You are 20 times more likely to die in public, outside of jail, than you are in a Riverside County jail,” Bianco said. “And the medical care the inmates get is far better than the care you and I get, and it’s much more readily available.”
He said his agency is highly controlled and monitored by the state, the civil grand jury and the state Auditor’s Office, which reviewed San Diego County’s jail system and said it would be better served by modeling some of its practices after Riverside County’s.
Bianco believes the Justice Department investigation may have something to do with an interview he did with the Epoch Times, in which he sharply criticized the failures of Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom on public safety issues. A video of the interview went viral on social media about a week before Bonta publicly announced his investigation.
“I will not back down on the failures of the governor and the attorney general in our current public safety system,” Bianco said.
Bianco said three of the inmate deaths in 2022 were suicides, but he noted that jail deputies and nurses saved 96 other inmates who had attempted suicide. Additionally, he said there were six overdose deaths in 2022, but 110 other inmates who had overdosed were revived and survived.
“We saved 206 people,” Bianco said. “This is a total false narrative and utter lie by the ACLU.”
As to the classification and screening of inmates, Bianco said all inmates undergo a “painstaking” screening process to determine where in the jail they should be housed and who they are housed with. All variables, he said, are taken into account — their charges, criminal histories, ages, health and the like.
And if any inmate has a problem with a cellmate, he or she is moved, no questions asked, Bianco said.
Contrary to the lawsuit describing Spratt as a nonviolent offender, Bianco said he had a history of violent offenses even though he was not in custody on a violent offense at the time of his death. He said Spratt and Payne were housed together in the same cell for three months with no issues.
Attorneys for Spratt did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
As for Niroula, Bianco said the only information he was privy to was that Niroula was seeking sex reassignment surgery at the time of her death and wanted the county or state to pay for it.
“The bottom line with homicides, if somebody is going to kill someone in jail, and they choose to follow through with a murder, that person is responsible, not the deputies or the Sheriff’s Office,” Bianco said.
