On July 31, 2018, at 10:44 a.m., a surveillance camera captured Diana Sanchez giving birth alone in a jail cell, with no medical supervision or treatment. The Washington Post reports a federal lawsuit was filed with the U.S. District Court in Colorado on Wednesday, saying Sanchez reached out for help multiple times after contractions began, only to be ignored and kept from having her baby in a safe and sanitary medical facility. Sanchez told KDVR the pain was “indescribable,” but what hurt more was the fact that “no one cared.”
An internal investigation was conducted, which cleared Denver Sheriff Department deputies of any wrongdoing. Sanchez’s attorney, Mari Newman, said it was “emblematic of how broken the system really is.”
When Sanchez was booked into the Denver County Jail on July 14, 2018, for identify theft, she was over eight months pregnant and due to give birth in about three weeks. Medical personnel was made aware of her condition, and even made note of her due date, the lawsuit claims.
That didn’t seem to make a difference 17 days later, when Sanchez told the deputy who delivered her breakfast that she was having contractions. She told the deputies and nurses at least eight times that morning, but no ambulance was called and, no medical supervision professionals came to her aid. For the next four to five hours, Sanchez was forced to endure a “long and painful” labor in her cell that was captured entirely on a jail surveillance camera—a camera that was supposedly monitored by DSD employees.
“It’s profoundly difficult to watch a person who is in so much pain, so much fear and at such medical risk, and yet nobody is doing anything about it,” Newman told the Post.
Around 10 a.m., Sanchez told a deputy that her water had broken, and that she had abdominal pains. These are all symptoms of imminent childbirth. According to the lawsuit, when the deputy told a nurse, the nurse only requested a van to take Sanchez to the hospital instead of an ambulance, knowing that it would be available only after bookings of new inmates had been completed, which could take hours … as if a baby was going to wait.
Instead of medical care, or even some empathy, Sanchez was given a single absorbent pad. She can be seen unfolding the pad onto her bed in surveillance footage.
Less than an hour after her water broke, Sanchez started shouting for help, the complaint said. A deputy arrived to Sanchez’s cell to find that the pad was soaked through and she was “clearly in excruciating pain.” When a nurse was informed of the situation, he allegedly responded that Sanchez was already scheduled to go to the hospital, so she didn’t need medical care, the suit said.
By 10:42 a.m., video of the cell showed Sanchez with her pants around her knees, her face distorted in a grimace. Soon, she is frantically taking off her pants and underwear. The door of her cell opens, but no one comes in to help.
Sanchez’s mouth is wide open in a scream. Within seconds, a small baby tumbles out onto the bed and only then does a man wearing surgical gloves enter the cell. He appears to examine the infant, gently patting the baby’s back a few times. At least two people in uniforms can be seen.
California Rep. Karen Bass shared her thoughts and outrage about this case on Twitter, including a one-minute video clip showing parts of Sanchez’s struggle.
Sanchez would not be transported to the hospital, via the Denver Fire Department, for over 30 minutes after giving birth, and there was no clamp for the baby boy’s umbilical cord. Sanchez said staff at the hospital told her she could have bled to death. She told KDVR, “They put my son’s life at risk.”
In a statement to the Post, a Denver Sheriff Department spokeswoman insisted that (“deputies) took the appropriate actions under the circumstances and followed the relevant policies and procedures.” She later added that “To make sure nothing like this happens again, the Denver Sheriff Department has changed its policies to ensure that pregnant inmates who are in any stage of labor are now transported immediately to the hospital.”
Newman said she hopes to see some accountability for her client—and to “force wrongdoers to change their behavior.” She also voiced disbelief that policies needed to be changed for that to happen.
“I would like to think that institutions and people will do the right thing for their own sake, but apparently that’s not the case,” she told the Post.
That certainly wasn’t the case for Diana Sanchez and her son.