‘Shocking in the height of negligence’: Judge blasts San Diego County for deleting video footage from 2022 jail death

A federal magistrate judge has found that San Diego County failed to preserve potentially critical surveillance footage related to the 2022 in-custody death of William Hayden Schuck, a 22-year-old man who died after several days in a holding cell at the downtown Central Jail.

In a tentative ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Allison Goddard described the county’s handling of the video evidence as “shocking in the height of negligence.” Despite having a written policy requiring surveillance footage to be kept for at least two years, the Sheriff’s Office allowed more than 57 hours of footage to be erased.

The missing video came from a camera aimed at a hallway leading to a holding cell where Schuck was kept for roughly five days. Attorneys for his family say the footage could have captured whether deputies performed welfare checks or if medical staff entered the area — both key issues in their lawsuit accusing sheriff’s staff of negligence.

Although the Sheriff’s Office preserved 36 hours of footage from that same camera, it allowed the remainder to be overwritten — even after county attorneys received two notices from the family’s attorneys asking that the county retain all records and video related to Schuck’s incarceration and death.

In a deposition, a Sheriff’s Office official said “there probably isn’t a single deputy in the department” that knows about the video-retention policy. Instead, footage is automatically overwritten when facility DVRs “start reaching the data retention threshold.”

At the Central Jail, that threshold is about nine months, he said.

Goddard pointed out that the family’s attorneys had sent evidence preservation requests on April 28, 2022, and Sept. 15, 2022 — both well within nine months of Schuck’s March death.

“The county didn’t follow its own written policy,” Goddard said during the hearing. “The county didn’t follow its own unwritten policy.”

County attorney Steve Inman argued the deleted footage wasn’t important because it didn’t show the inside of Schuck’s cell or even the door.

The Sheriff’s Office “would not have considered this allegedly missing video to be related to Schuck, because it didn’t show Schuck,” he said.

But Goddard rejected that reasoning, pointing out that some video from the hallway camera had been preserved — meaning someone found it relevant. The full 57 hours would have shown whether staff walked by, entered the area or checked on Schuck.

“Sometimes, if a video shows nothing,” she said, “that could be the most relevant evidence of all.”

Inman also argued that other footage from March 15 — the day before Schuck died — showed him walking to court and interacting with others, including a judge, who didn’t raise any concerns about his condition.

But depositions indicate sheriff’s staff did express concerns about his condition. A transport deputy who brought Schuck back from court described him as disoriented, incoherent and physically unstable.

“He was acting odd and weird,” the deputy said, adding that Schuck had to be guided to prevent him from wandering off.

Back at the jail, the deputy said he told a receiving officer “This man needs to go to medical,” and expected he’d be seen immediately.

Another deputy recalled that Schuck was unable to stand on his own and that the only coherent word he could say was “thirsty.” That deputy did not escort Schuck to medical or alert staff that he appeared to be in distress, the family’s lawsuit says.

Later footage showed two deputies moving Schuck from the holding cell to a housing unit on the jail’s seventh floor. In that video, he struggles to remain upright and collapses twice.

He was found unresponsive the next morning, March 16.

Schuck had been in custody for less than a week when he died. He was arrested on March 11, 2022, and placed in a temporary holding cell without a mattress for several days.

His autopsy report describes bruises, scrapes and open sores across his chest, back, arms and legs. He was severely dehydrated, with a sodium level of 167 — far above the normal range.

Attorneys for his family argue that he was neglected in custody, held in a part of the jail referred to by deputies as the “back 40,” a slang term originally used by farmers to refer to a remote piece of land.

In depositions, one deputy said the area was “off the beaten path”; another said people held there could easily be forgotten during routine safety checks.

The county medical examiner ruled Schuck’s death an accident caused by drugs still in his system from his March 11 arrest, with dehydration listed as a contributing factor. A medical expert retained by the plaintiffs called dehydration the primary cause of death.

“The circumstances of this case really strongly raise the inference that Hayden was forgotten about in that cell,” said Lauren Mellano, one of the family’s attorneys.

Under federal court rules, parties are obligated to preserve electronically stored information, including surveillance footage, when they know litigation is likely.

As a sanction for the missing footage, Goddard said she would allow jurors to draw an “adverse inference” — meaning they are allowed to assume the missing footage would have been unfavorable to the county.

Goddard said she didn’t believe the county or Sheriff’s Office had acted in bad faith. She stopped short of imposing more severe penalties, but she did grant the plaintiffs’ request for attorneys’ fees.

She also ordered both sides to meet and confer on the proposed jury instructions related to the missing evidence. If they can’t agree on the language, she said, she will step in.