$10.19 Million Paid for Retired California Prison Guard’s Death in Colorado Jail
by Chuck Sharman
On June 30, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado dismissed a suit filed over a gruesome death in the Huerfano County Jail, after the Estate of the dead detainee, Michael Burch, accepted a $9.19 million payout from the County, plus another $1 million from its contracted healthcare provider, Health Care Partners Foundation (HCPF).
Burch, 69, had retired from a career as a prison guard with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and was living in Walsenberg when he was arrested in late March 2023, after threatening passersby with a rubber mallet. He was taken to the jail, where staff agreed he wasn’t rational but ordered no mental health evaluation.
On his third day there, he was found with a small pencil and ordered to drop it. When he refused—even though he was alone in his cell—guards Stuart Pino and Cpt. Lea Vigil made no attempt at de-escalation, as their body-worn cameras recorded. Instead, they rushed into the cell and shot Burch with a Taser, tackling him onto a metal bench.
The elderly detainee began to cry out in pain, but HCPF nurse Shanene Sanders, who was watching at the cell door, offered no aid, circling her finger by her head as she mouthed to the guards, “He’s batshit.” Paramedics Sam Trujillo and Gabriel Martinez were summoned from Spanish Peaks Regional Health center, but they performed only a cursory examination and ignored Burch’s plea for transport to a hospital.
Despite Burch telling guards “my ribs are crushed,” they taped black plastic over the cell door window and largely ignored him, except to allow a telehealth consultation with two HCPF staffers, RN Rachel Simpson and Nurse Practitioner Jennifer Green. They also ignored his physical injuries, though Green made a note or two about his possible mental health problems. Six days after intake, on April 3, Burch collapsed in his cell with a loud thud, surveillance video recorded. A guard who found his body about five hours later radioed to a colleague: “This guy’s frozen, bro.”
An autopsy found that Burch sustained multiple rib fractures when he was tackled onto the metal bench, causing a collapsed lung and leaving blood pooling in his intestines over his final week. His death was ruled a homicide. But then-district attorney Henry Solano declined to press charges, unwilling to fight the guards’ argument that they acted in self-defense.
Suit Filed, Survives
Dismissal Motion
With the aid of attorneys from Rathrod Mohamedbhai LLC in Denver, Linda McMillan, the personal representative of Burch’s estate, filed claims under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Colorado constitution, accusing staff from the jail of excessive force and, along with HCPF staff and the two paramedics, of failing to intervene and showing deliberate indifference to Burch’s serious medical needs, in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights. The complaint also sought to hold the County and Sheriff Bruce Newman liable for failure to train his jail staff. A further claim was made against HCPF for a similar failure to train its staffers.
The case proceeded to a motion to dismiss filed by HCPF and its staffers, along with a similar motion filed by the paramedics. When the district court ruled on January 28, 2026, it agreed with Trujillo and Martinez that their diagnosis of Burch’s medical condition was incorrect, but not unconstitutional. Accordingly, their motion was granted and they were dismissed from the suit. But the motions by HCPF and its staffers were denied. Sanders, the district court said, acted as a gatekeeper in control of Burch’s access to healthcare—so even if she wasn’t qualified to make a diagnosis, she owed him the duty to send him to someone who could. Since she didn’t, she violated his constitutional right to adequate care.
Similarly, Simpson and Green were potentially liable even if they did offer the telehealth visit. As the district court noted, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has held that “a court may need to determine whether there was the functional equivalent of a complete denial of care in light of the specific circumstances.” Since that was possible here, it was also possible that a jury could find “doing nothing in the face of serious medical needs is obviously sufficient to state a claim under both [primary and gatekeeper] theories” of liability. See: Lucas v. Turn Key Health Clinics, LLC, 58 F.4th 1127 (10th Cir. 2023). [See also: PLN, Sep. 2024, p.1.] Accordingly, the motions to dismiss by HCPF and its staffers were denied. See: Est. of Burch v. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs for the Cty. of Huerfano, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 120907 (D. Colo.).
The parties then proceeded to reach their settlements. Under the terms of its agreement, the County promised to pay the Estate $9.19 million. HCPF agreed to pay another $1 million, Colorado Public Radio reported. Both payouts included costs and fees for Estate attorneys from Rathod Mohamedbhai, including Felipe S. Bohnet-Gomez, Katie W. Valiant, Matthew J. Cron, Stephanie L. Wise and Omeed M. Azmoudeh, along with co-counsel from attorney Adam J. Schultz of his eponymous firm in Pueblo. See: Est. of Burch v. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs for the Cty. of Huerfano, USDC (D. Colo.), Case No. 1:25-cv-00975.
The CDCR said that Burch was hired in 1985 and worked as a guard at California Correctional Institution and California Men’s Colony before a transfer to the state Correctional Training Facility for the last nine years of his career, as PLN reported. He then retired to Colorado, where he died 10 months later. [See: PLN, June 2025, p.52.]
Additional source: Colorado Public Radio
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