A Sacramento man died after he was strangled at jail. The Sheriff’s Office didn’t announce it

A man died after he was strangled by his cellmate in the Sacramento County Main Jail last year — the first known homicide of an inmate since 2019. The Sheriff’s Office did not tell the public it happened.

The Sacramento Bee learned of the death because it was included in a 124-page third-party medical report required as part of a 2019 settlement from a federal class action lawsuit.

Tyus Hutton, 25, was strangled by his cellmate on Aug. 23, the report states The strangulation caused him to lose his pulse, and be intubated. He was transported to the hospital, where his family said he was determined to be brain dead. He died Nov. 6.

The Sacramento County coroner determined the death was a homicide.

The Sheriff’s Office did not announce it to the public because Hutton had been given a “compassionate release,” said Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Amar Gandhi.

The Sheriff’s Office can do a compassionate release when an inmate is in the hospital in critical condition. It means the person is technically no longer an inmate, and allows the family more visits.

The Sheriff’s Office has previously announced other inmates’ deaths who were on compassionate releases, including Justin Dean Smith, who died in August 2022.

Civil rights attorney Mark Merin said the Sheriff’s Office should have announced Hutton’s death.

“They’re not being transparent,” said Merin, who has sued the county several times when inmates have died in the jail. “The jail is and should be properly under scrutiny because horrible things happen in it. The more the public knows, the more likely they are to demand that improvements be made ... You’d expect they’d be able to protect people. If one person kills another, that indicates a major lapse.”

Merin filed a legal claim with the county on behalf of Hutton, the precursor to a lawsuit, Merin said. The county has not yet responded.

Gandhi did not answer questions about whether the death had sparked any policy changes at the jail and the name of Hutton’s cellmate.

Hutton suffered from serious mental illnesses — schizoaffective and bipolar disorders, the report states. He was taking an antipsychotic. Missing doses of an antipsychotic can cause the person to go into psychosis — a loss of contact with reality, sometimes accompanied with debilitating paranoia.

The report does not contain any information about whether jail medical staff were giving Hutton his medications properly. However it does say they sometimes missed days of giving medications to other inmates.

In one instance, the nurses didn’t give the morning heart medication to an inmate, then gave him two at night, and he had to go to the emergency room with hypertension, the report states. In another case, an inmate with depression did not see a psychiatric provider for over three months after they arrived at the jail.

The jail has vacancies for three physicians, and three nurse practitioners, the report states. Concerns over vacancies are discussed in the federal settlement, called the Mays consent decree.

“The county has not provided enough nurses and deputies to timely administer medications,” the report states as an ongoing issue. “Nurses documented that medication administration was canceled altogether for lack of custody staff”

‘The dignity that he deserves’

Hutton grew up in Sacramento and was a former public works intern at the city of Sacramento, according to his Facebook page. He studied at Universal Technical Institute and was an Uber Eats driver. He had posted in recent years about Black Lives Matter, getting out the vote, and raising money for a child at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. His photos had many comments from family members, aunts, uncles and cousins.

“My demand is for an independent third-party investigation — a very thorough one so I can know what happened to my son — and for us to be treated with respect and as humans,” Tyus Hutton’s mother, Talina Hutton, said during a September news conference, Fox 40 reported. “Give my son the dignity that he deserves.”

The Sheriff’s Office is investigating the death, said the county’s Inspector General Kevin Gardner. Once they are done, Gardner will do his own investigation, he said.

“I don’t get their case for review until their investigation is complete,” said Gardner, who started at the county earlier this year. “I may have further comments at a later date.”

Hutton’s death brings the number of Sacramento inmate deaths last year to seven. So far this year four have died, including two in the detoxification cell.

There was one death the Sheriff’s Office did not announce last year — Norman Fisher, 47, who died in the hospital in May. The new report says jail medical staff should have sent Fisher to the emergency room much faster than they did.

In September, Sheriff Jim Cooper announced his office had found a ring of six people who had been smuggling drugs into the jail in exchange for money, including a woman who was working on call at the time for Avid Healthcare Services. Avid is still one of the county’s 11 jail medical service contractors.

The Board of Supervisors last year approved nearly $1 billion for a new mental health and intake annex to the jail, which county officials say will improve medical and mental health care, but it won’t open until 2028. In the meantime, the lack of compliance could result in the county jail being placed into receivership. That would mean a judge would appoint a third party to take control of things like the jail budget, contracts, and staff, instead of the Board of Supervisors.

Of the 30 Sacramento inmates who have died since the start of 2021, Hutton is the only known homicide.