A federal lawsuit filed this week charges that a Huerfano County deputy tackled a confused inmate undergoing a mental health crisis, causing internal injuries that deputies, paramedics and other medical personnel largely downplayed or ignored for a week.
The suit, announced this morning, lays out a horrific sequence of alleged "indifference" leading to the 2023 death of Michael Burch, a 69-year-old former California corrections officer who had moved to the southern Colorado town of Walsenburg to enjoy the region’s beauty in his retirement.
No one was charged with a crime in the death, and the lawsuit marks the first widespread reporting around those events.
“This case is probably one of the worst — if not the worst — jail death cases I've experienced and seen in 20 years, not just [my] cases, but of all cases in Colorado,” said Qusair Mohamedbhai, one of the attorneys representing Burch’s estate. “...I've never seen this level of pain and physical suffering in any case.”
An attorney representing the Huerfano County Sheriff’s Office, Eric M. Ziporin, declined an interview request.
“I have been made aware of your inquiries today with my client,” Ziporin said in an email. “Thank you for your inquiry but we do not have any comment at this time.”
The suit indicates something went wrong with Burch’s mental state in late March of 2023. He was spotted around town rambling incoherently. He came to the attention of sheriff’s deputies on March 25 when he threatened people with what the suit described as a rubber mallet. No one was injured, but Burch was booked into jail for menacing.
But despite agreement among deputies and intake workers that he was acting irrationally, he was not evaluated for a mental health diagnosis, and was initially placed in cell 100. Court records show he was then ordered held in lieu of $15,000 cash bond on March 27. Two days later, he was formally charged with assault in a separate case and bond was set at $45,000.
By then, he was slowly dying without medical intervention, according to the suit.
That’s because, according to the suit, on March 28, Burch was spotted on a surveillance camera making slashing motions in the air with a miniature pencil, the kind used for keeping score in golf. It had been provided to him by someone at the jail, and Burch had mostly used it to make notes in his cell. No one else was in the locked cell at the time and no one was threatened by the pencil.
From there, the suit relies on surveillance video and audio from bodyworn cameras to allege that events at the jail escalated dramatically:
Detention Officer Stuart Pino and Huerfano Capt. Lea Vigil went to cell 100 and ordered Burch to drop the pencil. The cell door was unlocked and Pino shouted, “you ready? Drop the pencil now! Drop it, or we’ll drop you!”
Pino was pointing a Taser electric shock device at Burch. Vigil had also drawn a Taser.
Burch made no threats, but Pino approached anyway, then fired his Taser. Burch then raised his hands and began to move toward Pino.
At that point, Pino tackled Burch into a bench in the cell. The whole interaction lasted about 40 seconds.
Burch was in immediate pain, howling in anguish and talking somewhat incoherently. After handcuffing the man, Pino kneeled on his side and accused him of resisting.
“Dude, you didn’t learn your lesson the first time?,” Pino said.
A short time later, Burch replied.
“Help me Jesus,” Burch can be heard saying on Pino’s bodyworn camera. He was handcuffed and laying on his injured side beneath Pino, who was holding on to Burch’s upper arm. “Pray for me everybody. Pray for me…Take those hands off me.”
“You’re not in charge here,” Pino responded.
“Jesus Christ, let me live,” said Burch.
A nurse’s aide from the jail stood in the cell doorway, but did no apparent medical assessment of Burch. Vigil suggested to the woman that Burch’s distressed mental health was responsible for his behavior and cries of pain, not severe injuries. She circled her index finger next to her head and mouthed the words “he’s batsh–,” according to video obtained by the attorneys.
Paramedics overseen by Spanish Peaks Regional Health Center, according to the suit, arrived to assess Burch, but were seen on video doing nothing beyond talking to him, and briefly lifting his shirt to look for injuries. Burch, meanwhile, pleaded to be taken to the hospital.
“It’s just the right side. My ribs are crushed,” Burch said. “The pain is really coming guys.
Get me out of here please.”
They declined, leaving the jail without Burch. He was moved next door, to cell 101. Jail officers taped black plastic over the window so they could not see him.
For the next day, Burch was only seen at meal times and on occasions when deputies or detention officers removed the black plastic cover from the upper window on cell 101. He asked for water and pain medication at one point, and Vigil said she could only give him water. She dropped a bottle into the cell.
The next day, the black plastic was removed, but a crack in the window made it difficult to observe Burch by surveillance camera.
Over the next week, jail officers and deputies noted Burch was in pain. Video shows him scooting across the floor because he apparently could not stand or walk.
Five days after he suffered the injury, Burch was granted a video visit with a nurse practitioner based in Mississippi. The lawsuit charges that records of that visit reflect only Burch’s mental condition and make no mention of his complaints of pain.
The last time he could be seen or heard alive was 10:38 pm on April 3 when he tried to sit up, but fell over, the suit said. His head made an audible thud when it landed, according to the suit. An officer looked in the cell at midnight, but Burch may have been dead by then. The officer took no action.
At about 4 a.m., an officer opened the cell door and called over the radio, “this guy’s frozen, bro.”
Burch’s right side was a deep black color. An autopsy determined that Burch died “as a result of complications of blunt force trauma to the chest and abdomen,” including “widely displaced fractures of right ribs 7-12”; “right hemothorax, 500 mL” (blood pooling into the hollow area between the lungs and ribcage); “atelectasis of the right lung” (a collapsed lung); and “copious hemorrhage within the distal small intestine and colon” (more blood pooling),” according to pages quoted in the suit.
“We cannot find a case in which somebody walks in healthy and walks out in the body bag,” Omeed Azmoudeh, another attorney representing Burch’s estate, told CPR News.
“...This is, in our view, the unheard of case where somebody walks in healthy and never walks out. And just to add to how painful this was… the reason Mr. Burch's lung collapsed and ultimately killed him was not because a bone was poking into it, it was because the six fractured ribs were poking into all different parts of his internal cavity, making it so painful for him to breathe that his body chose to stop breathing. His body chose to suffocate over eight days. So rather than endure the pain of every breath — every breath got shorter and shorter and shorter until there were no more breaths to take. That is truly the thing of nightmares.”
The manner of death was determined to be homicide.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was called in to investigate the case, but then-District Attorney Henry Solano declined to file charges against anyone involved. Solano found that the initial tackle in cell 100 could be construed by a jury as self defense. Solano left office early this year due to term limits.
“The issues presented are whether use of force was used in a manner contrary to criminal law,” Solano wrote on Jan. 10, 2024. “Given the information identified at the time, there is sufficient information to identify the defense of self defense. The people have to not only prove any criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt, but must disprove any self-defense claim beyond a reasonable doubt… When viewed in this light after having reviewed all of the information, interviews and video, it is my conclusion that criminal charges should not be filed.”
Mohamedbhai’s Denver firm and attorney Adam J. Schultz of Pueblo are representing Burch’s estate. The suit names the Huerfano Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Bruce Newman, the Huerfano County Commission, Pino, Vigil and one other deputy, the paramedics, the nurse’s aide, a registered nurse and the nurse practitioner along with the Spanish Peaks Regional Health Center.
“At its core what we want is transparency and accountability,” Mohamedbhai said. “The government has simply not been forthcoming at all with the community and public as to what has happened — most people have never even heard of this case.”
