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A Multnomah County Jail deputy didn’t check on an inmate in the hours prior to his suicide, according to legal documents filed by prosecutors last week.
An investigation last year into a series of deaths at Multnomah County’s jails led to criminal charges against two jail deputies. But prosecutors offered few details about why they’d brought the official misconduct charges, and police reports released by the county were almost entirely redacted.
That changed on May 15, when prosecutors offered more details in one of the cases in response to efforts by the deputy’s lawyer to get the charges thrown out.
Corrections Deputy James Brauckmiller, prosecutors wrote, “failed to perform his duty to check on the inmates in his dorm and forged a checklist used to denote when those checks were made.” Brauckmiller was assigned to conduct two checks every hour. “An inmate was found deceased in a cell that [Brauckmiller] was supposed to be checking,” prosecutors note.
The inmate is not named, however, the date of the alleged crime listed on the indictment coincides with the morning 58-year-old Martin Todd Franklin was found dead in a cell in the county’s downtown jail. He had hung himself with a bed sheet from a grate in the ceiling.
This confirms what has long been suspected—WW reported in August that Sheriff Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell has been warning deputies at the jail to stop forging log books or be fired.