A federal judge has refused to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit against La Plata and Archuleta counties for the suicide of a 21-year-old man who hung himself in jail and remained undiscovered for more than two hours, despite being on suicide watch.

Saul Hernandez de la Torre was arrested in Archuleta County but housed in the La Plata County jail because of an agreement between the jurisdictions. It was in the jail that Hernandez de la Torre hung himself with a bedsheet on May 26, 2019.

Both counties asked U.S. District Court Judge Christine M. Arguello to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing they were not liable for Hernandez de la Torre’s wrongful death or for any violation of his constitutional rights through a failure to provide medical care and treatment. Last week, Arguello determined that Archuleta County could be held responsible, even though Hernandez de la Torre died outside its jurisdiction, because the county had an obligation to ensure its detainees were cared for in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. 

As for La Plata County, “Defendants’ conduct goes beyond a simple failure to monitor. Despite the fact that Mr. Hernandez de la Torre was on suicide watch, Defendants ‘provided him with the means to kill himself’ by leaving bedsheets that he could use to commit suicide,” Arguello wrote in a March 29 order.

David Lane, an attorney litigating the case against the two jurisdictions, agreed with the judge’s conclusion that counties cannot escape liability when they effectively outsource their jail operations to another entity with deficient training.

“Essentially, she held that you can’t simply throw a prisoner into a shark tank and then blame any ensuing damage on the sharks, which is what the defendants were trying to do,” Lane said. “We have no reason to believe any of the jails involved have improved over time or learned any lessons as of yet. But school is not yet out and we hope to teach them a lasting lesson by the conclusion of this case.”

Attorneys for the various defendants did not respond to emails seeking comment.

According to the lawsuit filed by Jhenna Hernandez de la Torre and the estate of Saul Hernandez de la Torre, the Archuleta County jail was uninhabitable at the time of his intake due to flood damage. The jurisdiction signed an intergovernmental agreement with La Plata County to house detainees, which stipulated, in part, that their legal custody “shall at all times remain with Archuleta County.”

On May 24, 2019, Saul Hernandez de la Torre reportedly refused to eat any of his meals and disclosed that he was thinking of suicide. The jail placed him on suicide watch and he met with mental health personnel. They agreed upon a safety plan in which Hernandez de la Torre would notify jail staff if he felt like he needed help.

That same day, Hernandez de la Torre sent a request, or kite, seeking assistance from medical staff. The kite received no response, apparently because the mental health service was closed for the weekend. Two days later, Hernandez de la Torre hung himself using a bedsheet in his cell.

Allegedly, no jail staff monitored Hernandez de la Torre on his suicide watch, and a deputy finally found his body two hours after his suicide – but only because the deputy was delivering evening meals.

Both counties challenged their culpability for Hernandez de la Torre’s death. La Plata County argued there was no pattern of similar incidents, suggesting the jurisdiction was not on notice that its training of jail personnel was so obviously subpar that it would lead to constitutional violations.

Archuleta County pointed the finger at La Plata, arguing it simply could not control how another jurisdiction chose to run its jail.

“Archuleta County and La Plata County are rural counties in southwestern Colorado. The distance between their respective county seats is approximately 60 miles,” wrote lawyers for Archuleta County. “It is neither practical nor realistic to expect Archuleta County, and other rural Colorado counties like it, to regulate the policies and day-to-day operations of another county’s jail facility located far away and outside Archuleta County’s boundaries.”

In February, U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter issued a recommendation after analyzing the allegations and arguments on all sides. For Archuleta County, Neureiter agreed it had a “non-delegable duty” to provide adequate care for Hernandez de la Torre, given that he was the county’s detainee. Other cases supported the notion that a government entity has a responsibility to ensure, when it delegates certain functions, that those contract relationships do not result in violations of detainees’ constitutional rights.

“That such a holding might open the doors for more Colorado counties to be sued for violation of constitutional rights does not strike the court as unreasonable,” Neureiter wrote in his recommendation. “A county cannot contract with another for the housing and care of inmates and then stick its head in the sand as to what the other county’s policies and procedures are.”

As for La Plata County, the magistrate judge indicated it could be held liable for failing to train its employees if it was predictable or obvious that jail guards would violate detainee’s rights by not having the specific skills needed for recurring situations. Neureiter found that all signs, from the failure to monitor Hernandez de la Torre to supplying him with the bedsheets he used to kill himself, pointed to a training lapse.

“The death of a suicidal inmate is a ‘highly predictable’ or ‘plainly obvious’ consequence of a training program that permits a suicidal inmate to be left in his cell alone, unmonitored, and with access to materials that can be used to hang himself,” Neureiter concluded.

The defendants objected to the magistrate judge’s findings. La Plata County maintained that nothing linked its level of training to Hernandez de la Torre’s death. Archuleta County believed the unique facts of the case, whereby a county had outsourced the entirety of its jail operations to another jurisdiction, had never been considered before under the “non-delegable duty” doctrine, at least by the federal appeals court that covers Colorado.

Arguello was unmoved by those pleas. The allegations currently before the court reasonably suggested a lack of training, she wrote. And regardless of whether a county is rural or finds itself contracting its jail operations, there are “two important aims of the non-delegable duty doctrine: (1) permitting plaintiffs the opportunity to vindicate Mr. Hernandez de la Torre’s Constitutional rights; and (2) preventing Archuleta County – a public entity – from avoiding liability by contracting with another public entity, La Plata County,” Arguello concluded.

The judge did, however, dismiss the wrongful death claims against Archuleta County only. Remaining in the lawsuit are Hernandez de la Torre’s constitutional claim against Archuleta County, the failure-to-train claim against La Plata County, and claims against individual jail guards and a nurse.

The case is Hernandez de la Torre v. La Plata County et al.