Video of dead inmate focus of ‘Code of Silence’ trial against ex-California prison guard

The retrial of an ex-California prison guard accused of a “Code of Silence” cover-up in the death of a 65-year-old inmate began Tuesday in Sacramento, with a prosecutor telling jurors that former Sgt. Brenda Villa falsified records to hide the fact that another guard had attacked the handcuffed prisoner.

“This case is about how the defendant falsified records,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rosanne Rust said in her opening statement of the second trial against Villa, who was convicted of perjury in July by another jury.

Villa is accused of orchestrating a cover-up by guards she supervised to obscure what happened to inmate Ronnie Price on Sept. 15, 2016, as three guards were escorting him from his cell to another at California State Prison, Sacramento, also known as New Folsom.

Two of those guards already have pleaded guilty in the case, which prosecutors say is part of the “Green Wall” that exists inside the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to obscure unjustified uses of force against inmates.

But Villa’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Defender Jerome Price, told jurors that his client wasn’t at the scene of the incident when guard Arturo Pacheco suddenly grabbed Ronnie Price by the ankles and yanked his legs out from under him, causing the inmate to fall face-first onto the ground and smash his head into the concrete.

Ronnie Price died two days later from a pulmonary embolism at UC Davis Medical Center.

“What happened to Ronnie Price was despicable, it was horrific, and it was unjustified,” Jerome Price told jurors.

But, he added, “Brenda Villa wasn’t there. When it happened, she wasn’t told that it happened. She’s not guilty.”

“You’re going to hear evidence of the Green Wall, the Code of Silence, and that’s real in a prison,” Jerome Price told jurors.

But he contended that Villa, who had only been at the prison for two weeks and was a new supervisor, responded to an alarm that sounded after Price was knocked to the ground and that she was “not present and left in the dark.”

The jury in the first case deadlocked on charges of conspiracy to commit falsification of records and three counts of falsification of records, and prosecutors opted to retry Villa on those counts.

Neither side told jurors during opening statements Tuesday that Villa already has been convicted of perjury and awaits sentencing, or that the previous jury deadlocked on the falsifying records charges.

But Villa’s attorney is banking on evidence from a witness the first jury didn’t hear from: the inmate himself.

The lawyer plans to show the jury two video clips totaling 18 minutes of an interview corrections officials did with Ronnie Price in the hospital the morning after the attack.

“He is going to recount in vivid detail what happened to him,” Jerome Price told jurors.

In the videos reviewed by The Bee, Ronnie Price told correctional Sgt. Kevin Steele that officers used deception to convince him to go with them, that they told him he was being moved to administrative segregation — “the hole” — after Price refused to be moved to a cell with another cellmate.

Ronnie Price, an inmate who died at California State Prison, Sacramento, is seen in an undated photograph provided by his family’s attorney.
Ronnie Price, an inmate who died at California State Prison, Sacramento, is seen in an undated photograph provided by his family’s attorney.

Ronnie Price had been at New Folsom only a week and had hopes of winning his release within a year by staying away from trouble. But in the videos he says he decided that the new cellmate might cause him trouble after the man visited Price’s cell in cellblock A6. Price said he asked him why he couldn’t move into Price’s cell instead of having to move himself.

“I asked him why he couldn’t come down here and move into a cell with me,” Ronnie Price told Steele. “He said, they do too much drug testing in the six building.

“So, my thing is, if you’re not using drugs it doesn’t make a difference how much drug testing they do. So, when he said they do too much drug testing it set off an alarm in my head that this is a problem. ... In my mind, I’m not going to get involved with this one. I’m 65 years old. If I can stay out of trouble I’m out on the street.”

The inmate recounted the attack to Steele as he was in a hospital gurney with his hands and legs cuffed, and said that when correctional officers first came to his cell to move him they told him he was going to be moved in with the other cellmate.

“I said, I’m not going down to the cellblock,” Ronnie Price said on the videos. He added that he understood refusing a guard’s order could cause him disciplinary problems.

“I was willing to take the punishment,” he told Steele. “If I go to the cell and I get caught up I’m going to spend years wishing I had tried to get out of a jam.”

Initially, Ronnie Price said, guards cuffed his hands behind his back and led him out of his cell, but then put on leg restraints, also, and began moving toward the new cellblock.

When Price realized he wasn’t being taken to “the hole,” he said he stiffened to stop, but did not resist more because he knew that would cause more problems.

“Two of them grabbed my right arm and they said, you’re going to the cell,” Price said. “I told them I’m not going to that cell. They said, you’re going.”

He added that he knew “if I hurt anybody I was going to be in trouble.”

When he stopped moving forward, “somebody stepped on my (leg) shackles, they pushed me,” he said.

Price fell face first onto the concrete, breaking out two of his dentures and two of his natural teeth, he said.

“When I raised my head up to spit my teeth out, somebody grabbed my head and slammed it into the ground,” he said. “That’s when it broke my jaw.”

In court documents, Jerome Price described much the same scenario.

“He recounts being led out of A6 and put in leg restraints once outside of the A6 block,” Jerome Price wrote in court documents recounting Ronnie Price’s interview. “Although he is general population, he is escorted in handcuffs, which is atypical but left to the escorting officer’s discretion.

“What is more disturbing is that he is put in leg restraints, which is highly unusual in an escort between general population housing, but standard protocol for transport to Ad Seg. Putting Price in leg restraints reinforced his belief that he was going to Ag Seg.

“When Price got to A7 and realized that he was not going to Ag Seg, that he had been tricked and deceived, he stopped walking and straightened up to signal his opposition to being housed in the new cell in A7. He figured he would get a write-up for his resistance, but did not pose a physical threat to the officers.

“That is when he remembers the fall, which he described as somebody having stepped on his leg chains to trip him up. He also describes an officer on top of him who, after the drop to the floor, smashed his head into the concrete.”

Ronnie Price said on the video that after that “I was hurting, the resisting part was over.”

“I told them, wherever you all want to take me.”

He added that he did not know the names of the officers involved, and that there were no other witnesses before an alarm sounded and the guards began walking him for medical treatment.

“Who picked up your teeth?” Steele asked.

“I don’t know,” Price replied.

Defense documents say Ronnie Price’s “account of his injuries and escort differ widely from the officers’ account of the incident, both in how they wrote the report and in how they later testified.”

“Given his death, he cannot be called as a witness to provide his own independent account of what happened. Without his version, the jury would be left with the version given by those who admittedly witnessed this excessive use of force and concealed it.

“Price’s account speaks to the formation of the conspiracy much earlier than the officers later admit. That evidence is critical to show who actually were members of the conspiracy and the lack of the opportunity for Ms. Villa to know about and participate in the conspiracy.”

The videos were played during a pretrial hearing last week, and Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb agreed to allow them to be presented during trial.

Two officers were escorting Ronnie Price at the time of the incident — Arturo Pacheco and Ashley Aurich. A third guard, Arturo Luna, was following behind.

Luna had been involved in a separate use-of-force incident with Pacheco a week before, court papers say, and prosecutors accused Villa of telling one guard to edit Luna’s presence out of his report on the incident because his presence at another use of force would look bad.

Villa was later convicted of lying to the grand jury about whether Luna was present when she responded to the scene.

Jerome Price said he plans to call an expert who would testify about how people can miss seeing something when they respond to critical incidents, and that Villa simply did not see Luna present.

Rust, who is trying the case with Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Anderson, told jurors that is not true.

“She had a clear view,” Rust said. “She ran across that grassy area. She arrived first.”

Pacheco pleaded guilty in July 2022 to two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law and two counts of falsifying records. He was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison.

Aurich, who is expected to testify, pleaded guilty in January 2021 to falsifying records in a federal investigation and testified at the first trial. She was sentenced to 21 months in prison.