California prison warden faces $5 million lawsuit from family of slain inmate

Tou Thao was halfway through his six-year sentence for second-degree robbery when he was beaten to death inside his cell at California State Prison, Sacramento, in September 2019.

The slightly built, 38-year-old Hmong man had been placed in a cell with Jose Antonio Negrete – a much larger convicted sex offender – despite warnings by Negrete that he wanted to be housed alone and would kill his cellmate, court papers say.

Negrete, who was serving a life term for sodomy, kidnapping, sexual battery and other offenses, already had been housed with two or three other cellmates before Thao, all of whom “feared for their safety, and moved out quickly,” court records say.

“There was time leading up to the attack that it was known to Tou Thao that Negrete was going to kill him,” according to a new lawsuit filed in Sacramento federal court seeking more than $5 million in damages over Thao’s slaying. “Negrete was very clear in his intent and plan to kill him.”

Despite that, the lawsuit says, Thao was kept in the cell with “a much larger and more powerful psychotic sex offender,” a fact the lawsuit calls “a housing assignment disaster that is such an obvious mismatch as to show the warden was indeed acting in a wanton and deliberately malicious manner...”

Thao was found unresponsive in his cell on Sept. 5, 2019, around noon, and later pronounced dead at Mercy Folsom Hospital. The coroner determined the cause of death as “blunt force injuries of head and ligature strangulation.”

Negrete, 46, is still housed at CSP Sacramento, and is facing a murder charge in Sacramento Superior Court. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and is attempting to have his public defender removed from the case.

The suit names Acting Warden Jeff Lynch and was filed on behalf of Thao’s parents and siblings by Sacramento attorney Herman Franck.

The lawsuit is the latest controversy for the prison, also known as New Folsom, that is the focus of claims that guards there are complicit in the killing of inmates, that some have planted evidence in inmates’ cells and that a guard found dead in his West Sacramento home last October from a drug overdose had been “hazed to death” by other guards.

Corrections officials did not have an immediate response to requests for comment on the lawsuit Monday.

But Franck said in an interview that Negrete made it clear he wanted to be in a cell by himself or would kill his cellmate.

“It was basically, ‘Make me a single cell,’ which you don’t really have a right to do,” Franck said. “This is prison. This is not the Hilton.

“But what he did say was, ‘I want a single cell or I will kill him.’ And they didn’t give him a single cell, and he did kill him.”

Franck said evidence from the autopsy showed Thao had his head bashed in.

“I wish I could unsee it, but I’ve seen a picture of his autopsy, and, oh God,” Franck said.

Thao’s father, war veteran ChaKong Thao, also saw his son’s body in an Oroville funeral home after the slaying and was horrified by his injuries, which were “without a doubt the most horrific killing of a person he had ever seen,” the lawsuit says.

“What he saw was absolutely horrific, and shows a kind of attack and beating that is truly that of a psychotic animal beast on some type of killing rage,” the lawsuit says. “The front of his son’s face had a large gash and broken-through bone in his nose and eye area; a broken mouth; teeth missing; and the back of the head showing an obvious broken neck.

“It was apparent to (Thao’s father), a retired lieutenant for the Lao Royal Military, and later for the U.S. CIA secret forces during the ‘secret war’ period at the end of the Vietnam War, that the nature of the injuries was such that the assailant (Mr. Negrete) was apparently smashing his head in after he had already broken his neck.”

In a bizarre twist, Franck says he received a hand-written letter several weeks ago from Negrete offering to help him with the lawsuit – without admitting guilt – and providing four case citations that could be used to show prison officials failed in their duty to protect Thao.

Franck said he immediately contacted Negrete’s criminal defense attorney, Greg Foster, to provide him a copy of the letter and did not respond to Negrete.

“I can speculate that he feels bad...,” Franck said. “He knows that the prison did the plaintiffs wrong.”

This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 11:57 AM.