Fired South Bay Jail Guard Sentenced for Allowing Beating of Incarcerated Man

“Correctional officers are sworn to protect the public and the inmates,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement on Tuesday. “This officer betrayed the public, betrayed the inmates and betrayed the badge. My office will hold corrupt correctional officers to account for their behavior.”

Nelson McElmurry, an attorney for Castillo, said Tuesday that Castillo plans to appeal the case and seek a stay of the ruling. “He maintains his innocence and intends to fight as long as is necessary,” McElmurry said.

Castillo knew the attack was going to happen because the “attackers had told him their intentions just 30 minutes earlier in a meeting at his desk,” during which Castillo told them to “‘handle it,’” Rosen’s statement said.

Castillo opened the victim’s cell using his control panel, and the two incarcerated men “punched and kicked the victim for about 30 seconds” inside the cell.

The victim later activated his cell’s emergency call button, which authorities said turned on a green light above his cell door and sent a “series of pings throughout the module to notify the guard.”

Castillo was the only deputy in the area, and he silenced the notification and turned off the emergency light, authorities said. “He approached the victim’s cell but did not turn on his body-worn camera, ensuring there was no record of their conversation.”

The victim, who has not been publicly identified, requested help from Castillo, but he did not call for medical help and didn’t report the attack. He instead met with the attackers to “concoct a plan to keep word of the attack from getting out,” according to Rosen’s office.

The two men who attacked the victim and another incarcerated man who stood watch at the cell were charged and convicted of the beating, while Castillo was fired, Rosen’s office said.

Castillo is scheduled to return to court to surrender on June 9. It was not immediately clear where he would serve his sentence.

Castillo’s sentence was handed down on the same day a county body charged with oversight of the sheriff’s office and its work in jails presented its annual report to the county Board of Supervisors, recapping major incidents and offering recommendations for improvement.

The Office of Corrections and Law Enforcement Monitoring, run by Long Beach-based consultant OIR Group, praised Sheriff Robert Jonsen, saying that under his tenure, there has been “increased access and regular, meaningful communication with Sheriff’s Office officials.”

Jonsen’s office has taken an approach “of cooperative engagement…rather than the grudging and limited compliance of our early years under the prior Sheriff,” the report said, referring to former Sheriff Laurie Smith, who resigned from office in late 2022 during a corruption case involving her issuing of concealed carry gun permits.

The report flagged a serious Internal Affairs case in which a civilian employee of the jails was alleged to have been “bringing drugs into the facility and providing them to female IPs (incarcerated persons) in exchange for sexual favors.”

The Sheriff’s Jail Crimes Unit “corroborated the allegations through a surveillance operation,” and the sheriff’s office put the employee on administrative leave and later fired him.

A search of the employee’s locker “revealed that this conduct was part of a prolonged pattern,” the report said, and criminal charges for sexual activity with a confined adult and bringing drugs into a jail are pending.

The report noted that OCLEM later received an anonymous complaint “alleging that particular Sheriff’s Office leaders had been aware of complaints about this employee’s misconduct for more than a year but failed to act to protect his female victims,” which prompted another investigation.

The sheriff’s office, in a written statement, said the allegations from the anonymous complaint were “thoroughly investigated and ultimately determined to be unsupported by any credible evidence.”

The report also discussed the sheriff’s review of the death of an incarcerated man after he was “brutally assaulted” by other incarcerated men at the Elmwood Correctional Facility in January 2025.

The report agreed with the sheriff’s office findings that there was no negligence or misconduct on the part of deputies, but noted an “additional level of formal scrutiny was warranted.”

The report said the facility could benefit from larger surveillance monitor screens for deputies, as the attack lasted 15 minutes and much of it was recorded, but not seen in real time.

The report also said the predictability of the deputies’ welfare checks on incarcerated people “created risk,” and suggested making those checks “more staggered and unpredictable.”

Raj Jayadev, the director of community organizing group Silicon Valley De-Bug, said he has several concerns about the work of the oversight consultant, including its praise of the sheriff’s office.

“Using the former disgraced sheriff as a litmus test is probably the wrong way to start a conversation of what is valuable oversight or transparency by the sheriff’s department. That was such an incredibly low bar,” Jayadev said of Smith’s tenure.

He said the report is “essentially just documenting the violence or documenting the failures to respond,” while not doing enough to make real changes for people in the system.

He pointed to the drug smuggling and sex case, and noted the county’s jails remain under a federal consent decree due to poor jail conditions and outcomes.

“It’s in the culture of incarceration in Santa Clara County and what’s tolerated and who’s listened to and who is believed and who is respected,” Jayadev said. “The consistent throughline since the killing of Michael Tyree is that those who are held in custody are not heard, listened to, or respected.”

Tyree was a mentally ill man detained at the county’s Main Jail when he was fatally beaten in his cell by three sheriff’s correctional deputies in 2015.

The sheriff’s office said it appreciates the report from OCLEM and its recommendations, many of which have already been put into place, and that it remains “committed to strengthening our systems, operations, transparency and prevention efforts moving forward.”

Jonsen, in the statement, said independent oversight is a critical component of maintaining public trust.

“Transparency has been and will remain a cornerstone of my commitment as Sheriff,” Jonsen said.