DENVER — A 69-year-old man slowly suffocated to death in a rural Colorado jail after his ribs were broken during an altercation with a deputy and he languished in a cell for a week without medical care, according to a lawsuit announced by the man’s family Thursday.
The 2023 death of Michael Burch was ruled a homicide. Following a state investigation, prosecutors decided not to bring criminal charges against the deputy who used a Taser on Burch and wrestled with him in a Huerfano County jail cell. District Attorney Henry Solano noted there was “sufficient information” that the deputy could say he acted in self-defense.
An autopsy report found six of Burch’s right ribs had broken and his right lung collapsed after the altercation with the deputy. He wasn’t taken to a hospital but instead was transferred to another cell where he was found dead seven days later.
“The simple act of breathing became so painful as Mr. Burch’s shattered ribs continued to pierce and tear through his organs that his body stopped using his right lung, which shrank to half the normal size,” lawyers for Burch’s estate said in the federal lawsuit.
It named as defendants the Huerfano County commissioners, sheriff’s office, individual sheriff’s officials, paramedics and the hospital they worked for as well as nurses and the nonprofit company contracted to provide health care to jail inmates.
The lawsuit accuses them of causing Burch’s fatal injuries and not doing anything to treat them, violating his constitutional rights.
A lawyer representing the county and sheriff’s office, Eric Ziporin, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Spanish Peaks Regional Health Center, Stacy Cristelli, said the hospital could not comment because of patient privacy but would defend itself in court.
Lawyers for Burch’s family from the firm Rathod Mohamedbhai said they were not aware of anyone being disciplined or fired in connection with Burch’s death.
Burch was tackled after he refused to drop a pencil he had been given to take notes in the cell. A deputy had warned him “Drop it or we’ll drop you”, according to body camera footage. Once the Taser was used, Burch began to charge at the deputy and the video, which becomes obscured, shows him going to the ground near a steel bench in the cell and his arms being held by the deputy. The lawsuit says Burch was tackled into the bench, which it says broke his ribs.
Burch, a former California prison guard, was arrested on March 25, 2023, after a series of erratic acts, including driving up to the home of two strangers and swinging a rubber mallet around, that the lawsuit claims was caused by his deteriorating mental health.
Burch’s mental health was not evaluated when he arrived at the jail, the lawsuit claims, although video captured another sheriff’s official signaling he was crazy by stirring her finger next to her head after he was hit with the Taser and tackled on March 28, 2023.
The inmate screamed and moaned as the deputy then used a knee to keep Burch on the ground when he was accused of resisting. Later he appeared calmer when he was evaluated by paramedics. He told them that his ribs had been crushed and said he wanted to go to the hospital but the paramedics did not evaluate his chest, according to the lawsuit.
Body camera footage shows one paramedic saying he was going to check out his right side but it was not clear from the footage what he did.
Burch was not taken to the hospital, the lawsuit said, but moved to a neighboring cell, where the blurry window in the door was temporarily covered by plastic that said “warning security and safety zone”, which was also captured on video.
After Burch told a sheriff’s captain that he barely survived the night on April 1, 2023, he was seen over video by a contracted nurse in Mississippi but she did not ask to see Burch’s chest, the lawsuit said, instead focusing her attention on his mental health.
Three days later, Burch was found dead on the concrete floor of his cell.
