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Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson dropped all charges Thursday against most of the 11 Santa Rita Jail guards and staff accused in the 2021 death of inmate Maurice Monk.
Dickson said she will still prosecute three of the defendants — two Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, Donall Rowe and Robin Hayer, and one former deputy, Thomas Mowrer — who are all facing one count each of dependent adult abuse.
Hayer, also known as Robinderpal Singh Hayer, is also charged with falsification of an official document.
Dickson said that after she took office in February, she ordered a review of the Monk case, which was originally charged by her predecessor Pamela Price, who was ousted in a recall election last year.
“The question that had to be answered by the district attorney’s office is whether the actions of each of the eleven defendants who were previously charged caused them to be criminally culpable,” Dickson said in an emailed statement Thursday.
“After a comprehensive review of all the evidence, we have determined that the answer to that question is yes, as to three defendants,” she said. “The DA’s office will vigorously pursue justice on behalf of Mr. Monk and his family as we prosecute this case.”
Dickson’s decision isn’t sitting well with Monk’s family, who issued a statement through their lawyer Thursday saying they were disappointed.
“It has been nearly four years since Mr. Monk’s deteriorating medical condition was ignored, causing his death, when all that the guards and the jail’s medical contractors needed to do was their jobs, and to consider Mr. Monk as someone whose life was valuable,” said attorney Adante Pointer.
“Santa Rita’s guards and the medical staff from Wellpath all failed to do that, and in their ability to even view Mr. Monk as a human who was suffering,” Pointer said.
The 45-year-old Monk died in his cell in November 2021 and was found in a pool of bodily fluids after being dead for about three days.
Guards allegedly ignored his condition even as meals delivered to him piled up uneaten and Wellpath nurses allegedly just tossed his medications into the cell, according to civil lawsuits filed against the county and the health care company.
Monk was being treated for diabetes and schizophrenia at the time and was in jail for about a month prior to his death.
He had been arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct for allegedly refusing to get off an Alameda-Contra Costa Transit bus and failing to appear on a misdemeanor warrant for another alleged altercation on a bus.
In 2023, Alameda County agreed to a $7 million settlement with Monk’s family, an agreement that also requires the Sheriff’s Office to improve the ways in which it conducts observation checks on inmates.
In June, Wellpath, the company responsible for medical care at Santa Rita Jail, settled a $2.5 million federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Monk’s family.
Of the original criminal defendants, eight are now off the hook, including sheriff’s deputies Ross Ohalloran Burruel, Andre Gaston, Syear Osmani and Mateusz Laszuk, former deputy Troy Hershel White, Alameda County Behavioral Health Dr. Neal Edwards and Wellpath nurse David Everett Donoho.
— Story by Kiley Russell, Bay City News
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