DUBLIN — A woman gave birth in Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, screaming for hours, alone, with nothing to wrap her baby girl in but the jail jumpsuit on her back.
The woman, Candace Steel, has now filed a federal lawsuit against the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office alleging her mistreatment in jail, medical malpractice and negligence.
Steel gave birth to her baby, a girl she named Hope, in July 2017. The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court Northern District, alleges that Steel was screaming in pain, but instead of being cared for, was placed in isolation without adequate clothing, a blanket, and had her screams ignored for hours by deputies.
“What kind of inhumanity runs that jail?” said her attorney Yolanda Huang.
This is the second similar lawsuit Huang has filed on behalf of her clients in recent months. In January, six current and former female inmates at the Santa Rita sued the county, saying they were coerced into abortions and were treated inhumanly as pregnant women.
Huang, in a press conference in January, mentioned that a woman had given birth in solitary confinement, and they were trying to locate her. Sheriff spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly confirmed the birth at the time.
Kelly, however, said the woman was initially taken to the hospital and misdiagnosed with Braxton Hicks, or false contractions, and then taken back to Santa Rita.
Huang said that it wasn’t false contractions, but early labor.
“You don’t take a woman who is obviously pregnant … you don’t stick her in a concrete box. You make her comfortable and wait for labor to progress,” the attorney said.
Despite Steel’s screaming, deputies did not check in on her until they heard the baby’s cry.
“Can you imagine if this was someone’s wife, and you stuck her in a closet and locked the door? I’m outraged, because that’s what Santa Rita did,” Huang said.
It was other women in custody, who heard the torturous screams of the woman in labor, that insisted she investigate, Huang said.
The first lawsuit is currently in settlement negotiations, and Huang said she cannot comment on the case.
In Steel’s case, she had first been taken to Valley Care Hospital before being booked into Santa Rita to be medically cleared, the lawsuit says.
She told doctors that she had not received any prenatal care for her pregnancy, and had experienced seizures in a prior pregnancy. She also told them she smoked tobacco daily, had smoked marijuana within the last day, drank alcohol during her pregnancy and had smoked methamphetamine in the fifth month of her pregnancy.
Doctors diagnosed her with a urinary tract infection, which untreated could lead to pre-term labor and delivery, the lawsuit says.
Because her intake form said all this about her history, including her medical condition, medical personnel at the jail “should have recognized that (Steel) presented a higher than normal pregnancy risk,” according to the lawsuit.
Days later on July 23, 2017, other inmates pressed the emergency button when they saw Steel was in so much pain she was crawling on her hands and knees. Medical staff at the jail, a nurse, said she was exaggerating her symptoms, the lawsuit alleges.
Steel says deputies placed her in an isolation cell as punishment for exaggerating and closed the window on her cell door to muffle the sound of her screams.
Hope was born with the umbilical cord around her neck, but her mother was able to remove it and got her to breathe.
In addition to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, the California Forensic Medical Group is also named in the suit. According to the lawsuit, the medical group contracts with the county for prenatal, gynecological, obstetrical, and maternal services at Santa Rita Jail.