City to pay over $5 mil to families whose loved ones overdosed on Rikers
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The family of Donny Ubiera, pictured right, will be paid $2.49 million by the city after Ubiera died of an overdose on Rikers Island in 2023. Photo via ECBAWM
By Jacob Kaye
The city has agreed to pay nearly $5.2 million to the families of two men who died on Rikers Island of methadone overdoses, including one man from Queens whose family said the Department of Correction hid information about their loved one’s death.
The city recently settled two lawsuits with the families of Jose Mejia Martinez, who died in the jail complex in 2021, and Donny Ubiera, who died in 2023. The city settled with Martinez’s family for $2.7 million and with Ubiera’s family for $2.49 million.
Martinez and Ubiera, whose families were both represented by Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, both died of methadone overdoses, which they suffered while being ignored by DOC staff.
It took officers four hours to stop to provide aid to Martinez after he began showing signs of an overdose, according to a lawsuit.
Similarly, Ubiera, who was from Bayside, was heard banging on his cell door and calling for help during the night before he died, but got no response from officers.
“My son needed care, compassion, and protection. Instead, he was left in an environment where his mental health worsened, his cries for help went unanswered, and the system failed him at every turn,” Maricela Ubiera, Donny Ubiera’s mother, said in a statement.
“No mother should have to bury her child because the people responsible for his safety chose not to act,” she added. “I hope Donny’s story leads to real change so no other family has to endure this pain.”
The circumstances leading up to Martinez and Ubiera’s death have been reflected in a number of other fatal incidents on Rikers Island in the past six years. Investigators with the Board of Correction, the New York attorney general’s office and other oversight agencies have regularly found that officers have skipped conducting their rounds or ignored other DOC protocols in the hours before a person’s death.
“These settlements reflect the devastating consequences of a correctional system that repeatedly failed two vulnerable men in its custody,” Julia P. Kuan, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, said in a statement. “Jose Mejia Martinez and Donny Ruben Ubiera each showed clear signs of medical and psychiatric distress, and in both cases, the city failed to provide the supervision, treatment, and emergency intervention that could have saved their lives.”
“We hope these resolutions bring some measure of accountability and underscore the urgent need for meaningful reform at Rikers,” she added.
The city’s Law Department declined to comment on the settlements.
Martinez died in the George R. Vierno Center on June 10, 2021 several weeks after first being sent there on a nonviolent parole violation.
Martinez, who had a history of substance use and mental health disorders, had obtained methadone, which is used to treat opioid addiction, from another detainee. He took the pills in the jail unit’s dayroom, one of the most open parts of the jail.
It wasn’t long before he began staggering, tipping over and leaning against a wall. At one point, an officer allegedly walked past Martinez, but didn’t offer any assistance.
Martinez was then helped back to his cell by another detainee. He sat there for hours.
Jose Mejia Martinez was seen on security camera footage on Rikers Island taking methadone pills he received from another detainee. Officers allegedly ignored him in the hours before his overdose death. Photo via court filing
While officers allegedly looked into his cell multiple times, they didn’t call for help or take any action to reverse what would later be determined to be an overdose.
Another detainee found Martinez to be unresponsive and called for help. By that point, Martinez had already died and was showing signs of rigor mortis, according to the lawsuit.
The attorney general’s office later determined that a DOC officer violated agency rules and ignored their training when they failed to get medical care for Martinez after witnessing him struggling.
Ubiera, who also died in the George R. Vierno Center, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in the lead up to his death. He spent part of his incarceration at a psychiatric center, was held in a mental observation unit upon his return to Rikers.
According to a lawsuit brought by his family, Ubiera attempted to choke himself with a sheet or towel multiple times in front of officers, who only told him to unwrap the object from around his neck.
His mental health continued to worsen while on Rikers Island, according to the suit.
On Aug. 21, 2023, Ubiera was given methadone from another detainee and took it in view of correction officers, according to the complaint.
After returning to his cell, Ubiera allegedly began to become distressed and repeatedly banged on his cell door. His pleas for help went ignored, the lawsuit said. At least one correction officer failed to conduct their rounds during their shift, footage from the jails later showed.
Ubiera was found unresponsive the next morning.
About a year later, Ubiera’s family sued the DOC claiming that the agency didn’t follow the proper Freedom of Information law procedures after they denied the family’s request for a number of documents and videos that may have shed light on the moments leading up to his death.
The DOC had denied a Freedom of Information Law request asking the city to turn over a video timeline of the incident. It also called on the DOC to turn over Ubiera’s preliminary health report, any incident reports they had, disciplinary history for staff that were on duty in the days before the death, reports on the facility Ubiera was being housed in, and emails sent by the DOC regarding Ubiera’s death to the chief medical examiner, the BOC and the Queens district attorney’s office, and more.
