Orange County Sheriff's Department (OSCD) officials announced late today that the local court system has one less criminal defendant to process because a pre-trial inmate died yesterday.
That man, 54-year-old Paul Michael Dewey, allegedly attempted suicide “while alone in the day room area of a housing module” on Oct. 30 inside the central jail in Santa Ana, according to a department press release issued late today.
Dewey died Monday in a hospital from those unspecified self-inflicted injuries.
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Court records show that Dewey was arrested on Oct. 27 by Anaheim police for drug possession and a parole violation.
He had pleaded not guilty.
Sheriff's officials did not release any other information–like how Dewey allegedly harmed himself and what efforts were taken to save his life, but investigators inside the Orange County District Attorney's office will investigate the death.
For background, you should read THIS and, certainly, THIS.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.