An Orange County sheriff’s deputy testified Tuesday that one of his peers at the Orange County Jail used what he called “holy water,” to burn the arm of a mentally ill defendant to get him to pull his hands back into his cell.
Deputy Joseph Mayers was not regularly assigned to the Module L section of the Intake Release Center in Santa Ana, but was working there on April 1, 2021, when he escorted a nurse to treat cuts on the hand of Oscar Rodriguez through a hatch in his cell, according to Deputy District Attorney David McMurrin.
At some point the inmate exposed himself and said something along the lines of “treat this,” according to the prosecutor.
When Mayers told him he would be written up for it, Rodriguez refused to pull his arms back into the cell to allow for the hatch to close, McMurrin said.
Multiple attempts to get Rodriguez to comply failed, so Mayers and another deputy turned to veteran Deputy Guadalupe Ortiz, who had 23 years on the job with eight in the Mod L assignment and who had been honored for his “outside the box” de-escalation tactics, Ortiz’s attorney, John Barnett, said.
“Yes, he is troubled, has mental health issues, but he is a career criminal,” Barnett said of Rodriguez..
Rodriguez is a “compulsive masturbator,” Barnett said.
“We’re talking about someone who is dangerous,” Barnett said in his opening statement of the trial. “Extremely dangerous… And he was off his meds.”
A psychiatric analysis of him at the time noted he was “psychotic and irrational,” Barnett said.
On the day of the conflict with Rodriguez, the inmate had smeared his cell with feces, Barnett said.
Six weeks prior to the conflict, Ortiz was given a commendation for “being caring… for helping mentally challenged inmates,” Barnett said.
Ortiz was named jail deputy of the year in 2016-17, Barnett said.
Barnett told jurors that Ortiz had mixed cold and hot water as a de-escalation tactic to get the inmate to pull his hands back into his cell. There was some urgency to get Rodriguez to pull his hands back into his cell because deputies were concerned he might grab a nurse or deputy passing by, so it meant none of the other inmates were getting their medications, Barnett said.
Because of Rodriguez’s reputation at the jail Ortiz was reluctant to call for an extraction team because that would likely lead to the inmate resisting them and then force would be the last resort, Barnett said.
“He wanted to avoid the use of force,” Barnett said. “He didn’t know Oscar was burned… He didn’t know there was injury.”
The extraction team would have had to subdue Rodriguez and sedate him and then place him in a “rubber room,” Barnett said.
Hilary Velardo, an Orange County Crime lab forensic specialist, testified that she tested the water from the dispenser at the jail and it was measured about 190 degrees, but under questioning from Barnett she said she did not test to see what the temperature would be with a mix of cold water.
Deputy Chris Roberts, who works as a behavioral health specialist at the jail, said Rodriguez was “a highly erratic individual,” who would sometimes “have some OK days, but even his good days weren’t great… He could be highly confrontational.”
Roberts was filling in for another guard during lunch when the conflict with Rodriguez occurred. Roberts testified it was important to get the inmate to pull his hands back in because he noted one time a nurse had her arm broken by an inmate grabbing her.
Roberts said he had asked Rodriguez to clean up the feces he smeared on the wall that day. He also saw Mayers and another deputy attempt to talk to Rodriguez to get him to pull his hands back in.
“I could see a lot of frantic motions,” Roberts testified about his vantage point from a guard tower. “He was just ranting and raving and I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying.”
Eventually, the three deputies returned to the guard station and told Roberts the “situation was taken care of,” Roberts said. “Everything seemed under control… When the deputies said it was handled I didn’t think much more about it.”
Roberts testified that the deputies would use saline bottles to squirt at inmates during safety checks to get a reaction to make sure they were OK. They called it “holy water,” and that method was preferred because sometimes an inmate might “feign” sleeping and attack a deputy who goes into the cell, Roberts said.
Ortiz was a mentor who had provided insights into gaining compliance with inmates with tactics not in the training manual, Roberts testified. The goal was to avoid use of force, he added.
Mayers, who was with Ortiz when he used the water on Rodriguez, said the inmate “shouted, `Hey,’ and he seemed agitated,” before he pulled his hands back in and another deputy closed the hatch.
Mayers said he did not expect Ortiz to use the tactic and that the defendant did not warn the inmate.
“Based on what I had seen from Deputy Ortiz in the past it seemed unconventional, but plausible,” Mayers testified. “He had a lot of experience. He had also been very recently publicly recognized for his unconventional tactics.”
Rodriguez did not complain of a burn at the time, Mayers said.
Near the end of his shift, Rodriguez asked for neosporin, but Mayers knew he was going to get some later for the cuts on his hand and told him the nurse would be along later, he said.
The next day Mayers approached a sergeant to get “clarification” on whether the tactic was OK.
Rodriguez sustained second-degree burns on his arm.
Ortiz was originally charged with a felony count of assault and battery by a public officer and a felony count of battery with serious bodily injury, but those charges were knocked down to misdemeanors with the battery with serious bodily injury dismissed on Monday.
Testimony will continue Wednesday.