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MURDERED BY
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MANUEL TRILLO

Manuel Trillo, a heroin addict, was in prison on a conviction of drug possession for sale and had a lengthy rap sheet. His wife Esther says: "He was a good person. He always tried to take care of his family. He was a good, loving person."
Courtesy of the Trillo family

CAPITAL MAN'S PRISON DEATH PROBED BY FEDERAL WATCHDOG

Fatalities bring scrutiny of medical care provided to inmates at Avenal facility.

Inmate's wife says he died of medical neglect

By Andy Furillo - Bee Capitol Bureau
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3

SACRAMENTO -- Manuel Trillo was supposed to be released from Avenal State Prison on Sept. 6, but the upcoming parole date now is nothing but another reminder of grief for his south Sacramento family.

A longtime thief and heroin addict diagnosed with Hepatitis C, Trillo, 53, died last October of gastrointestinal bleeding while in prison. His wife believes the death resulted from medical neglect, and the case is under investigation by the federal medical care receiver's office.

"People have their own opinions, but the way it was, he was a good person," said his wife, Esther Trillo. "He always tried to take care of his family. He was a good, loving person."

Trillo's Oct. 10 death came just before three inmate fatalities later in the year prompted a virtual medical takeover of Avenal by federal receiver Robert Sillen's office.

Sillen visited the prison in February and then dispatched a team of doctors from the University of California at San Francisco and dozens of medical staffers to stem what he characterized as a "medical delivery crisis" at Avenal.

The deployment made Avenal a key focus of Sillen's effort to fix a statewide prison medical system that the federal courts found to be unconstitutional.

The receiver's office declined to discuss the Trillo case in detail. A spokesman for Avenal State Prison also declined to discuss the death, referring questions to the receiver's office.

According to his death certificate, the underlying causes of Trillo's gastrointestinal bleeding were acute renal failure, cirrhosis of his liver and his Hepatitis C, the products of a lifestyle that included heavy drinking as well as his heroin addiction.

His wife said he had seen a doctor before he was imprisoned for the last time in September 2005. She said it was then that he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C and that doctors told him he should quit drinking.

"He stopped for a while, then he started again," Esther Trillo said of her husband, a construction worker and handyman by trade.

A few months before Trillo died, the Avenal medical staff conducted some lab work on his liver.

They also sought to refer him to a neurosurgeon for a painful condition in his neck, his prison records show, although it is not clear whether he was treated.

Trillo's wife questioned the care he got the day before he died.

She said Trillo's fellow inmates told her that her husband tried to see a doctor for a painful stomach ache but initially was ebuffed.

One of the inmates, Alvaro Orozco, serving time on a grand theft conviction out of Los Angeles County, said in a telephone interview with The Sacramento Bee that Trillo looked "bad" last Oct. 9 and that he helped walk him to the medical office that day.

"I heard in the night they brought him back," Orozco said. "I said, 'You should have stayed in the infirmary.' He said, 'No, they brought me back.' "

Orozco said Trillo's "eyes were yellow," that "you could tell his liver was shutting down." He described his fellow inmate as being "weak" and "in pain."

"That night," Orozco said, "he got real sick. He started coughing up blood."

Another trip to the infirmary resulted in prison officials transporting him to the Coalinga Regional Medical Center, where he died the next day at 10:15 a.m., his Fresno County death certificate shows.

Esther Trillo said she knows "it wasn't a perfect lifestyle" that her husband lived. He was in prison on a conviction for drug possession for sale. He also had previously been convicted of assault with a firearm, being an ex-felon in possession of a gun (twice), possession of a controlled substance, forgery and second-degree burglary.

Altogether, Trillo was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison on four separate cases dating back to 1983, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records.

Such backgrounds do little to add to the sympathy quotient for inmates such as Trillo, and the fact that alcohol and drug abuse contributes to the deaths of some also detracts from their public standing.

"The people who come to prison normally have abused their bodies a great deal," said Robert Borg, a retired, 32-year corrections veteran and former warden at Folsom State Prison who now testifies on occasion as a defense expert on behalf of the correctional system. "They're not doing things to take care of themselves. They don't eat right, they don't sleep right, and they put a bunch of stuff into their bodies."

"But that doesn't relieve anybody of anything," Borg added, in regards to the medical responsibilities of prison officials. "If they decide to give up and let somebody die, that's wrong, and I wouldn't be upset if (Trillo's family) sued. If they did everything they could and it was his lifestyle that killed him, it would be ridiculous to bring a lawsuit."

Trillo's wife said she wants to sue the state but can't find a lawyer to take the case.

Mark Ravis, a Beverly Hills attorney who has filed "eight to twelve" such wrongful death lawsuits, said the Trillo family is facing long odds in the legal arena. Ravis, for one, filed a suit in the highly publicized case of a Solano State Prison inmate who died in 2004 after prison officials failed to get him proper treatment for an abscessed tooth. That case has since been dismissed.

"There is medical neglect, there is failure to give prisoners critical medication, and they die," Ravis said. "But the (inmate families) have to live with, 'Who cares? It's just an inmate.' I think the state, frankly, depends on that sort of thinking to defend their cases. They believe the jurors are not going to be terribly sympathetic to the inmates."

In her south area home, Esther Trillo has a cabinet filled with pictures of her late husband surrounding an urn that contains his ashes. The cabinet is decorated with a blue and purple ribbon that remembers Manuel Trillo as a "beloved husband, father and grandpa."

She supports two grown sons on her $3,000 monthly salary as a receptionist for an air conditioning company.

Compounding her grief is another upcoming anniversary: the 2001 home invasion murder of her oldest son.

"Honestly, we're all trying to stay as strong as we can be," Esther Trillo said of her family. "The boys see how I stress and cry. I try not to, but it's not easy, especially in that it's getting close to a year coming up."

Esther Trillo begins to cry at her south Sacramento home as she pulls out photos of her husband, Manuel, who died of gastrointestinal bleeding last October while an inmate at Avenal State Prison. His death certificate cites renal failure, cirrhosis and hepatitis C as contributing factors, but his wife questions his medical care the day before he died.
Sacramento Bee/Lezlie Sterling

Esther Trillo, left, grieves with her sons Gilbert, 20, center, and Patrick, 18, for their father, Manuel Trillo. Esther says she would like to sue the state over her husband's medical care at the Avenal prison but can't find a lawyer willing to take the case.
Sacramento Bee/Lezlie Sterling

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Click the photo of Kelly Duda at work to order your own copy of
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Click the photo of Kelly Duda at work to visit the
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Please help spread the word about this important film,
along with the urls to the linked pages.

This PRUP (Prison Reform Unity Project) site owned by

Linda Tant Miller
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