Riverside County must pay millions of dollars to the family of a jail inmate who died in part because of a sheriff's deputy's failure to get medical help for him, a jury has ruled.
Richard Matus Jr., 29, died from fentanyl poisoning in jail in 2022. The jury awarded his family $13.5 million in damages, although the county is likely to pay less than half that amount because the jury also ruled Matus' own conduct was a major factor in his death.
The family of Matus, who was among a record-breaking number of people who died in Riverside County jails in 2022, sued the sheriff's department in March 2023, alleging it failed to provide him with adequate medical treatment, then illegally misreported information to state officials in a scheme to avoid
lawsuits.
In its verdict, the jury found that a sheriff's deputy, Angel Rojas, "unreasonably" ignored an inmate's intercom call about Matus' medical emergency, although it also ruled Rojas did not "deliberately" ignore the call.
The federal jury’s ruling Wednesday, Aug. 26, concluded a multiday trial in Riverside amid growing scrutiny of inmate deaths and of the sheriff’s department, which is led by Sheriff Chad Bianco and runs the jails.
“The trial was vigorously defended by the county, but members of the Riverside community have now spoken, and the county jails need to be reformed to prevent further inmate deaths,” the plaintiffs' attorney, Christian Contreras, said after the verdict.
Riverside County spokesperson Brooke Federico said that, because jurors determined the county was only 40% at fault, the county is responsible for $5.4 million of the total amount awarded by the jury.
The latest ruling came after the department reported 19 deaths of jail inmates in 2022, marking its deadliest year for such deaths. The jail system in Riverside County was the second-deadliest in the country from 2020 through 2023, as reported in a collaboration between The Desert Sun and the New York Times.
The surge in deaths was part of what prompted California Attorney General Rob Bonta to launch a civil rights investigation of Bianco’s department in 2023. That investigation is ongoing.
Bianco, who recently failed in his bid as a Republican candidate to be California’s next governor, has criticized Bonta’s investigation as politically motivated, and he’s accused media outlets and advocacy groups of misrepresenting the jail deaths to the public. Bianco has said he plans to run for re-election as sheriff in 2028.
Matus' mother, Lisa Matus, has been an active advocate for oversight of the sheriff's department since her son died, pushing the county’s board of supervisors to take action and calling for the separation of the sheriff’s department and the coroner’s office, which investigates jail deaths, performs autopsies and rules on causes and manners of deaths.
Earlier this week, the California Legislature approved legislation that would require the county to split the coroner’s office from the sheriff's office and create a separate medical examiner, not linked to the sheriff, to perform autopsies and rule on the cause and manner of deaths. That bill could soon be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Additionally, the county’s board of supervisors agreed in July to create an ad hoc committee that will bring review options to create additional oversight for the sheriff’s office, after a recent civil grand jury report found “systemic deficiencies” within the sheriff's department's protocols. The vote marked a change of course by the board, which rejected a similar proposal a year earlier.
Suit described death as part of systemic issue
Lisa Matus sued not only on behalf of herself, but her eldest son's surviving daughter and son. Her family is one of several that filed similar suits against the sheriff's department in recent years regarding loved ones who died in custody.
Richard and his brother Raymond Matus were charged as codefendants in a 2018 attempted murder and robbery case. They had been incarcerated in the county's jail system ever since, with Richard Matus serving as his own attorney after numerous delays to the case reaching a trial courtroom.
On Aug. 11, 2022, Lisa Matus received a call from Raymond Matus, who told her Richard had been found dead in his cell. Raymond Matus said he had been questioned by deputies in the jail about whether his brother had any medical conditions, to which he said no. Deputies told him his brother had died but did not notify relatives outside the facility.
The sheriff's department said Matus was found unresponsive in his cell at the Cois M. Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta, and was pronounced dead about 45 minutes later. The department's medical examiner ruled the death an overdose, one of several that fueled the record number of deaths in the jails in 2022. The plaintiffs described incident as a mishandled emergency and a systemic problem.
“The individuals named in the lawsuit were repeatedly put on notice of great dangers which existed within Riverside County's correctional facilities through the long history of in-custody deaths (and) the record-breaking amount of fentanyl overdoses throughout all county correctional facilities,'' according to the plaintiffs' complaint. “Long before Richard Matus Jr.'s death, the sheriff's department knew there existed great indifference to the safety and protection of inmates.”
The county countered in court documents that Matus was responsible for his own actions and that the defendants lacked “sufficient knowledge or information or belief” that there were “grounds (for) the allegations.”
Reporting from City News Service, as well as prior reporting from former Desert Sun reporter Christopher Damien, was used in this report.
Tom Coulter covers local government and politics for The Desert Sun. Reach him at thomas.coulter@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Sheriff's deputy found at fault in jail death; county to pay millions
