Judge tosses most charges in death of Maurice Monk at Santa Rita Jail

An Alameda County judge dismissed most remaining charges against three past and presentsheriff’s deputies indicted in the 2021 jailhouse death of Maurice Monk, who laid motionless for days in a Santa Rita Jail cell while allegedly receiving little — if any — care.

Superior Court Judge Clifford Blakely tossed every felony charge of dependent adult abuse against the three remaining defendants in the case: Robinderpal Singh Hayer, Thomas Mowrer, and Donall Rowe. The move came after a legal challenge by the deputies’ attorneys claiming prosecutors erred in presenting their case to a grand jury last year, as part of an uncommon legal maneuver.

The ruling, which was delivered during a hearing Friday, leaves only one deputy still charged in a case that originally included 11 defendants and was brought just days after voters opted to recall former District Attorney Pamela Price. The only charge remaniing accuses Hayer of falsification of official document by an officer.

The county’s subsequent district attorney, Ursula Jones Dickson, later dropped charges against eight of those original 11 defendants — six of them past and present sheriff’s deputies, one of them WellPath nurse and another an Alameda County Behavioral Health clinician. That move kicked off a monthslong string of high-profile dismissals in cases brought by two of Jones Dickson’s predecessors that targeted law enforcement officers.

Jones Dickson’s office issued a statement Friday calling the ruling “disappointing,” adding that “we respect the rule of law and the court’s decision.”

On Tuesday, Hayer’s attorney said the dismissed count “should never have been brought in the first place,” and signaled plans to fight the remaining charge.

“This case has always been nothing more than political virtue signaling,” said the attorney, Paul Goyette.

Rowe’s attorney, Joshua Olander, said he agreed with the ruling but declined to comment further. Mowrer’s attorney, Alison Berry Wilkinson, also declined to comment.

Monk, 45, was declared dead on Nov. 15, 2021, after languishing for days while he lay facedown in his Dublin jail cell, a pool of brown liquid oozing from beneath his body as trash and uneaten food accumulated on the floor around him.

At the time, Monk had been held in the jail on $2,500 bail on a misdemeanor charge of threatening a bus driver after an argument over whether Monk should wear a face mask on the bus, court records show.

Throughout his month-long stay at the jail — and particularly over the last several days of his life — security footage and records showed deputies and jail staff doing little to care for Monk, such as checking on his vital signs or ensuring he received needed medications, according to his family’s lawsuit. Deputies repeatedly walked by him in the days before he was declared dead, with some wondering aloud “is (Monk) awake? Is he alive?,” the lawsuit claimed.

His family later received a $7 million in a settlement with Alameda County — along with assurances that the sheriff’s office would implement new training for its deputies — and another $2.5 million from a health care company.

The case against the three remaining deputies took an unusual turn in late 2025 when Jones Dickson opted to seek indictments against the men from a grand jury. Such proceedings take place in secret, with prosecutors presenting evidence and questioning witnesses without any ability for defendants’ attorneys to challenge their narratives.

In doing so, prosecutors bypassed the need for a preliminary hearing, during which a judge rules on whether enough evidence exists to send the case to trial after a hearing that’s open to the public.

In a flurry of recent court filings, the three deputies’ attorneys argued that prosecutors erred when making their case to the grand jury.

The attorneys said prosecutors wrongly asserted that Monk qualified as a “dependent adult” — a key element of the felony charge that all three men faced — due solely to his status as a jail inmate. The attorneys instead argued the statute under which the deputies were charged “was not designed with incarcerated persons in mind,” according to court filings ahead of Friday’s hearing.

An attorney for Monk’s family lamented the decision Tuesday, saying it “leaves the community begging the question as to whether or not there’s any real hope that officers who offend, violate and harm our community ever have a chance of being held accountable.” He also questioned how the case could unravel so thoroughly.

“In law school, law students are taught on their way to becoming lawyers that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich by way of a grand jury,” said the attorney, Adante Pointer. “So it begs the question as to whether the prosecutor’s heart was really in the case.”

Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at [email protected].