The family of a 22-year-old Ojo Sarco man who hanged himself in March 2004 in his cell at the Santa Fe County jail filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday in District Court.
When he was taken to the jail March 15, 2004, after being arrested in connection with the slaying of a 26-year-old Los Alamos man, New Mexico, state police officers told jail personnel that Juan Ignacio Sanchez was emotionally distraught, potentially suicidal "and should be carefully watched," the suit states.
Also, Sanchez was suffering from heroin withdrawal and "extremely disturbed and fearful about the fact that he had provided information against other individuals who were involved in the crimes with which he was charged and which might result in him being labeled a 'snitch' and subjected to beatings and retaliation in jail," according to the suit.
Sanchez should have been referred to mental-health services and put on suicide watch, but was instead housed in the jail's general population, according to the suit.
The next day, Sanchez was "attacked and threatened in his housing unit as the result of information indicating he had disclosed evidence regarding his co-defendants ," the suit states. He was then put in a single occupancy cell, but not subjected to suicide monitoring, according to the suit.
While he was in that cell, jail personnel refused to allow his mother to see him and wouldn't deliver a note from his sister or tell him his mother had been there, according to the suit.
On the afternoon of March 17, a state police investigator called the jail and asked a records clerk to retrieve Sanchez's shoes - which he had been allowed to keep in the jail - so the investigator could photograph them. A property officer at the jail got the shoes from Sanchez, but allowed him to keep the laces as per his request, the suit states.
Sanchez then wrote two suicide notes, made a noose out of the shoelaces, attached it to the upper bunk in his cell and hanged himself, the suit says. He was found dead just before 5 p.m. by an inmate distributing food trays, according to the suit.
In one of the suicide notes, which was addressed to the district attorney's office and is part of Hamilton's court file, Sanchez said he initially lied to police, and only he and another man - Hamilton - "did mostly all the dirty work."
"The rest just watched," Sanchez wrote. "I slit his throat. They even tried to help the man that died, so clear their names."
In the other note, Sanchez said goodbye to family members.