$1 Million Settlement After Mentally Ill Man Died by Suicide in San Diego County Jail

Ivan Ortiz was 26 years old and had a documented diagnosis of schizophrenia when he was held at San Diego County Central Jail in March 2019. The evening of March 17, jail staff found him with a ligature mark around his neck after he had tried to strangle himself with a towel. He told guards that voices were commanding him to end his life. By any measure, the record showed he was a person in acute psychiatric crisis.

Despite that documented attempt and his stated intent, a plastic bag remained accessible to Ortiz in his observation cell inside the psychiatric wing. Under county jail policy, observation-cell inmates were to be checked every 15 minutes. The lawsuit alleged Ortiz went unmonitored for at least 45 minutes. On March 18, 2019, he was found dead, having suffocated with the bag.

His mother, Maria Palacios, brought a federal civil rights action against the County of San Diego, captioned Palacios v. County of San Diego (Case No. 20-cv-00450, S.D. Cal.). The suit alleged that staff had both actual knowledge of Ortiz's suicidal state and a constitutional duty to protect him, yet allowed the conditions that caused his death to persist.

Adam Hepburn of HHJ Trial Attorneys (then operating as Hepburn, Hernandez, and Jung) served as counsel for the family alongside co-counsel Brody McBride of Singleton Law Firm. The legal team argued that the failure was not a momentary lapse but a systemic breakdown: a prior attempt within the same custody period, documented suicidal ideation, and an item that should never have remained in reach of a person on suicide watch.

The Citizen Law Enforcement Review Board separately reviewed the incident and concluded that staff had failed to keep a suicidal inmate safe from self-harm and that the conduct was not justified. The County of San Diego agreed to a $1 million settlement, reached May 7, 2021. The case is recorded in federal district court records under 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88029.