LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from California corrections officials who had sought immunity from lawsuits, claiming they acted with deliberate indifference after they carried out a fatal shooting 4 years ago at certainly one of the world's most famous prisons COVID-19 outbreak caused.
The judges rejected the appeal without comment or objection.
The lawsuit stemmed from the botched transfer of infected inmates in May 2020 from a Southern California prison to San Quentin, where there have been no infections on the time. The coronavirus then quickly sickened 75% of inmates on the prison north of San Francisco, leading to the deaths of 28 inmates and one correctional officer.
California now faces 4 lawsuits from relatives of those that died, in addition to inmates and staff who were infected but survived.
“The state has gone through its due process all the way to the Supreme Court. They don’t get off on a technicality,” Michael J. Haddad, an attorney for the families, said in an announcement following the Supreme Court’s decision. “Now is the time to face the facts. Prison administrators killed 29 people in what the 9th Circuit called a “textbook case of willful indifference.”
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Monday that it doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation.
Prison officials “ignored virtually every security measure” when carrying out the transfers, said Marin County Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Howard wrote in a 2021 preliminary ruling within the event of.
State Sen. Mike McGuire, who represents the San Quentin region, called the deaths “entirely preventable” and said the transfer should never have happened. “I don’t say this lightly, but this is a failure of leadership,” McGuire said during a news conference 2020 Senate Oversight Hearing.
Lawyers for the state have alleged that prison officials have taken quite a few measures to guard inmates from infection, including temporarily reducing the population of the state's oldest prison by 40%, lower than the 50% advisable by health experts in June 2020.
Prison officials said the botched transfer itself was a flawed but well-intentioned try and move 121 vulnerable inmates away from an outbreak on the California Institution for Men in Chino.
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