By Phaedra Haywood
The Santa Fe New Mexican
CHAVES COUNTY, N.M. — A Chaves County woman whose 36-year-old son died of unexplained causes in a state prison solitary cell is suing the New Mexico Corrections Department over alleged violations of the state Inspection of Records Act, saying prison officials “have refused to provide plaintiff answers regarding her son’s unexpected and sudden death.”
Francisco Luevano’s body was found in his cell on Oct. 14, 2016, according to the complaint Jonella Luevano filed this week in state District Court in Santa Fe.
His body had already developed rigor mortis, the suit says, which typically does not set in for several hours after a person has died.
Luevano was housed in the alternative placement area of the state penitentiary south of Santa Fe, confined in a segregation unit where regular checks are required by Corrections Department policies, according to Matthew Coyte, the attorney representing Luevano’s mother.
Corrections spokesman S.U. Mahesh said in an email Friday: “Inmates in segregated/solitary unit are frequently checked every 30 minutes.”
But a state Office of the Medical Investigator report states that Luevano was last seen alive around 4:30 p.m. “when a visual check was made,” and when he did not respond to commands to communicate with a guard around 8:30 p.m., “his cell was gassed. The guards then removed Mr. Luevano from the cell and initiated CPR. When EMS arrived he was pronounced dead.”
“Because of the vast length of time between his death and discovery of his body,” his mother’s complaint says, “it is apparent regular cell checks were not conducted per policy.”
Coyte says a video taken of the common area outside Luevano’s cell shows that on the day he died, prison employees passed out lunch trays to Luevano and prisoners in nearby cells, and when he did not eat the tray of food placed on the slot in his door, they picked it up without checking on him.
“The video shows they served a dead man lunch and after he didn’t eat it, they retrieved it,” Coyte said Friday.
When Luevano’s mother sought answers about how her son died, the complaint says, she received a copy of a report from the Office of the Medical Investigator that lists both the cause and manner of her son’s death as “undetermined.”
In August, Coyte, an Albuquerque lawyer with extensive experience litigating cases against the Corrections Department, filed an Inspection of Public Records request asking for the “death packet” prison officials created regarding Luevano’s death, his suit says.
He requested everything the prison had on the death, including “incident reports and witness statements” related to the death and “all correspondence, electronic or otherwise” where Luevano’s death was discussed.
The department missed several deadlines outlined in the Inspection of Public Records Act, according to the request, deemed the request burdensome and asked for more time to respond before finally, 37 days later, producing a single document, identified as a serious incident report.
“The report totaled 20 pages, 10 of which were completely blank and the other 10 made up of forms with minimal or no information included,” the complaint says.
What followed, the complaint says, was a series of back-and-forth communications with Corrections Department General Counsel Jim Brewster and Catherine Earl, an employee in Brewster’s office, in which they contradicted each other on how Luevano died, whether his death had been investigated, and whether there were any more records responsive to Coyte’s request.
Earl told Coyte there were more records, but they required a medical release, the complaint says, then said documents existed that couldn’t be produced because the investigation was still ongoing.
“Ms. Earl then recanted and indicated the investigation had been closed,” the complaint says, but Brewster later said Earl was wrong and no investigation had been made into Luevano’s death.
“When asked how Mr. Leuvano died, Ms. Earl stated he died of a drug overdose,” according to the complaint.
But the medical examiner’s report said “Mr. Luevano had no obvious injuries, natural diseases or toxic substances in his system to explain his death.”
The report notes that “limitations” do exist in the autopsy process in that drugs not routinely checked for could be missed and physical problems without clear markers could go unidentified.
Coytesaid he believes prison officials still have records responsive to his request that they haven’t produced.
For example, Coyte says, the department continues to maintain that no emails exist discussing Luevano’s death in any capacity.
“Does that make sense to a citizen that someone dies in solitary in prison and nobody bothers to email anybody about it?” he said. “It’s very hard to believe.”
“We complied with the IPRA and produced all documents in our possession and as authorized by law,” Mahesh said.
Coyte’s complaint asks the court to order prison officials to produce outstanding documents in the case and to award Luevano’s mother damages of $100 per day from Sept. 26 through Oct. 5, when some records were produced, and $100 per day from Sept. 26 until the remaining documents are produced, as well as attorney’s fees.
Mahesh said New Mexico State Police conducted an investigation into Luevano’s death but a state police spokesman did not respond Friday to questions about the status or outcome of that investigation.
©2017 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.)