Normally, inmates are assigned a bed during their time in the Santa Barbara County Jail, but former inmate Johnathan Brislane alleges that he was forced to sleep on the floor for several months, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Aug. 11.
Brislane, 46, was arrested on Dec. 6, 2015, in Santa Maria and accused of possessing and selling marijuana and methamphetamine.
Following his arrest, Brislane states in the lawsuit that he was forced to sleep on the floor for “approximately 72 days.”
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown and the Board of Supervisors are listed as defendants. Brislane is being represented by Marion Yagman and Joseph Reichmann of Yagman and Yagman and Reichmann in Venice Beach.
The lawsuit is unique in that it’s a RICO, or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It’s a law that Brislane’s spokesman, Stephen Yagman, said most of the public is familiar with when the government prosecutes criminal organizations like the Mafia.
But racketeering cases are often brought against public officials in conjunction with civil rights abuse claims, Yagman said.
In this case, Yagman argues, the racketeering accusation comes from the policies of the sheriff and supervisors because they caused the jail to be overcrowded, and sleeping on the floor coerced his client into taking the rap for the charges.
“After two, three, four months, the people are so debilitated that they plead guilty so they can go sleep in a bed,” Yagman told the Sun. “That’s an obstruction of justice because they are coercing people by physical means.”
That coercion is the basis of the Brislane’s lawsuit and a practice that’s unconstitutional, Yagman said. The case is similar to the Thomas v. Baca lawsuit in 2004—which Yagman was also a part of—where two former inmates of the Los Angeles County Jail won a class action lawsuit against former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca for cruel and unusual punishment when they were forced to sleep on the floor without bedding.
Known as “floor sleeping,” it’s a practice Yagman said the sheriff and supervisors have been aware of for years.
Rated for a little more than 700 inmates, the Santa Barbara County Main Jail on Calle Real fluctuates between 800 and 1,000 inmates at any given time, although efforts were made to reduce jail overcrowding, which the jail has been faced with for years. One such effort was Proposition 47, the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, that eliminates jail time for certain types of felonies. Voters passed that law in November 2014.
And last May, supervisors moved forward on a 4-1 vote to continue with a plan to build a 376-bed Northern Branch Jail in Santa Maria by 2018.
Michael Ghizzoni, counsel for Santa Barbara County, told the Sun that he wasn’t able to comment on the case because the county hasn’t been served with papers.
This article appears in Aug 18-25, 2016.