Dozens of law enforcement agencies across California have less than two years to comply with a new state law, one that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office believes will do more harm than good.
Inspired by a 2024 county grand jury report, Assemblymember Gregg Hart’s (D-Santa Barbara) FACTS Act calls for independent medical investigations of in-custody deaths in county jails and state prisons to prevent actual or perceived conflicts of interest, as California is one of only three states in the country that allow elected sheriffs to simultaneously act as coroners.
“To me and the grand jury, it’s kind of a common-sense thing,” Hart told the Sun, about one week after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the FACTS (Forensic Accountability, Custodial Transparency, and Safety) Act into state law.
While neighboring counties like Ventura and San Luis Obispo leave the decision of whether to conduct an in-custody autopsy to an independent department or forensic pathologist, respectively, it’s up to the Sheriff’s Office’s coroner detective staff to make that call in Santa Barbara County.
The grand jury asked the Sheriff’s Office to either establish a separate medical examiner’s unit or outsource in-custody death investigations to an independent agency. Neither request was implemented.
Hart’s legislation—Assembly Bill 1108—was designed to address statewide conflict of interest concerns without the price tag of starting dozens of new coroner departments from scratch, he explained.
“Initially I thought we should just do what 47 other states do and separate the two offices,” Hart said. “But looking at [California’s] legislative history, there have been other authors that tried that and were not successful, primarily because of the additional costs to local government to create that entirely different department.”
Many of California’s larger counties already separate their sheriff and coroner offices, Hart added, “so the vast majority of the people in California live in counties that have an independent medical examiner.”
“Only smaller, less urban counties have maintained this historical approach,” he said. “It’s a very modest change in procedures.”
The FACTS Act tasks boards of supervisors in counties that hold dual sheriff-coroner offices to review and approve contracts with independent coroners to investigate in-custody deaths, “and by doing that, it creates a separation,” Hart said.
During legislative hearings this summer before the bill passed, the California State Sheriffs’ Association consistently voiced its opposition to Hart’s bill.
“There are concerns over the potential financial impacts to individual counties,” association Executive Director Carmen Green told the Sun in an email interview.
“Since 48 counties have sheriffs that also serve as coroners, this will likely create an imbalance in the workload for the other 10 counties that may be asked to provide these services,” Green said. “In some cases, the same pathologist serves multiple counties, so creating additional contracts is counterproductive.”
Green believes that the FACTS Act “unnecessarily complicates and likely delays the death investigation process, and in exchange, creates no discernible benefit to county government, law enforcement, or the communities served by our county coroners.”
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. Lt. Jarrett Morris told the Sun via email that the local department is “in lockstep” with the association, which “continues to have concerns as we move forward with this legislation,” Green said.
“The passage of AB 1108 is unnecessary and a solution to a problem that just doesn’t exist,” Green said.
In his response to the 2024 grand jury report that triggered Hart’s new bill, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said that the department’s coroner services “have withstood legal scrutiny in countless court cases and continue to provide the people of Santa Barbara County with credible, ethical, yet cost-effective death investigation services.”
“While there could be a perception of a potential conflict of interest with the Santa Barbara sheriff-coroner model, our agency has never been found to have had an actual conflict of interest,” Brown wrote in his response.
But even the perception of a conflict damages public trust, Hart told the Sun, and leaves room for uncertainty about in-custody death investigations that the FACTS Act aims to address.
“There is no confidence in those investigations and those circumstances,” Hart said.
Others who opposed Hart’s bill don’t think it goes far enough.
“There are many family members around the state whose loved ones died in custody [who] feel as though the investigation wasn’t done properly,” Hart said. “I actually did have some opposition from some of those family members to my bill, because they wanted the full separation of the offices. … It was not 100 percent of what they were trying to achieve.
“They were not supportive of this hybrid solution that didn’t go all the way to the full separation of those offices,” Hart recalled. “It was very challenging to me personally because I felt as though I was trying to represent their interests.”
The California Public Defenders Association was among the FACTS Act’s supporters prior to its passage.
“We like to keep tabs on proposed legislation that may impact our clients,” Santa Barbara County Assistant Public Defender Lea Villegas told the Sun via email.
“With AB 1108, cause of death is at least one factor that families of people who die in police custody will not have to question,” Villegas said. “Conflicting official messages deprive the community of clear explanations.”
During a recent press conference to celebrate the FACTS Act’s passage, Santa Barbara County grand jury Foreperson Dale Kunkel said he’s hopeful that the bill will strengthen public confidence in government. He also commented on the original grand jury report that influenced the bill.
“The year that report was issued, more than half of all the grand jury investigations had their recommendations adopted by the agencies that were investigated. This recommendation was not accepted,” Kunkel said. “Initially that outcome seemed to be a disappointment. But with this legislation, Assemblymember Hart has transformed this situation into a win not only for Santa Barbara County but for the entire state.”
In June, the grand jury released reports—separate from its 2024 investigation—on three in-custody deaths that it deemed preventable, including the death of Caprice Fowler in March due to a ruptured ulcer she suffered a few days after she was arrested.
In an outline of Fowler’s autopsy report, the Sheriff’s Office described her death as “tragic, but unavoidable,” while the grand jury concluded that there were missed opportunities to prevent her death while she was incarcerated at the county’s Northern Branch Jail in Santa Maria.
“When an inmate dies in custody, the public deserves an independent assessment of how and why that occurred,” Kunkel said at the Oct. 15 press conference. “Combining the role of sheriff and coroner is an artifact of an era when trust in government was high. For better or worse, that era is now long gone.
“The public now demands and deserves greater transparency and accountability from its government officials.”
Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 6 – Nov 13, 2025.