San Diego County to pay $4M to mother of man who died by suicide in jail

San Diego County has agreed to pay $4 million to settle a federal lawsuit brought by the mother of Lester Daniel Marroquin, who died by suicide in 2021 in the downtown Central Jail.

The settlement, finalized last week, is the largest San Diego County has paid in a lawsuit involving an in-custody suicide.

It also follows a key ruling earlier this year in which U.S. District Judge Judge William Hayes denied qualified immunity to a sergeant and a corporal who made the decision to move Marroquin, who went by “Danny,” from the jail’s psychiatric unit into administrative segregation.

Jail custody staff “caused Mr. Marroquin’s death,” Hayes wrote, by not taking into account his history of suicide attempts and self-harm when they decided to transfer him.

The agreement includes no admission of wrongdoing on the part of the Sheriff’s Office.

Marroquin, 35, died from acute water intoxication, an autopsy found — he had consumed enough water in a short period of time to cause the sodium in his blood to drop to a lethal level.

Marroquin, who had been jailed on assault and battery charges, struggled with mental illness and persistent delusions that someone was going to hurt his mother.

He cycled in and out of jail, his mother’s lawsuit said, “only to begin the cycle again.” Court records show his defense attorney had raised questions about whether he was mentally competent to stand trial, but there had not yet been a hearing on the matter.

The lawsuit argued that jail staff worsened Marroquin’s suicidal thoughts by cutting off contact with his mother — one of the few people who could calm him.

It also detailed multiple prior incidents in which he was placed on suicide watch or moved to a safety cell after attempting to harm himself.

Over his nearly six months in the Central Jail, he tried to use a Taser barb to slit his throat, submerged his head in a cell toilet, repeatedly hit his head against a cell wall and tried to strangle himself with a noose he had made from a shirt.

Despite these warning signs — and against the advice of at least one mental health clinician — Marroquin was placed into administrative segregation with conditions similar to solitary confinement just two days after a suicide attempt.

That clinician, Jennifer Alonso, later provided a sworn declaration in a separate class-action lawsuit over jail conditions. She treated Marroquin in the weeks before his death and said she witnessed firsthand how custody decisions routinely prevailed over medical judgment.

Alonso’s declaration was cited by his mother’s attorneys as evidence of the broader failures they say contributed to his death.

Marroquin was last seen alive just after 3 p.m. on May 30. An hour later, he was found on the floor of his cell. Attempts by deputies and paramedics to revive him were futile, and he was pronounced dead at 4:40 p.m.

“I still cry when I think about what happened to Mr. Marroquin; he should not have died,” Alonso wrote in her declaration.

Marroquin had been moved into administrative segregation on a Sunday, when Alonso was off work.

She noted that the Sheriff’s Office had ignored warnings from experts and staff to stop placing people with mental illness in administrative segregation.

“I have observed that solitary confinement exacerbates some of my patients’ mental health symptoms,” Alonso wrote, “and many of my patients are psychologically and physically harmed in this extremely isolating setting.”

Alonso left her job in April 2022. She estimated that at least six other mental health clinicians left the Central Jail in a single year, citing similar concerns.

“My decision to stop working at the jail was one of the hardest decisions of my life,” she wrote. “I have observed my patients decompensate, suffer in what can only be described as filthy, inhumane conditions and in some cases, die by suicide.”

When she was elected in 2022, Sheriff Kelly Martinez vowed to take steps to reduce deaths and suicides in San Diego jails. New initiatives include improved screening during intake and periodic wellness checks.

Suicides are now much less frequent in San Diego jails — the last one happened more than two years ago.

But the quality of care for people with mental illness remains a concern and is a focus of a class-action lawsuit over jail conditions.

Last month, one of the attorneys in the case was dispatched to the Vista jail to collect sworn declarations from three men who described the gruesome final days of 42-year-old Corey Michael Dean.

One of the men, Jesse Gonzales, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Dean seemed to be in a state of acute psychosis, banging on the walls and crying for help for days, to no avail.