Manse on Marsh’s former administrator likely dodges jail with plea in manslaughter case
The former administrator of The Manse on Marsh senior residential care facility in San Luis Obispo accepted a plea deal Monday and won’t be tried for manslaughter in the death of a 65-year-old client.
Gary Potts, who worked as No. 2 at the facility under owner Christopher Skiff in 2014, entered a no contest plea Monday to a felony charge of elder abuse.
Potts had faced an additional felony charge of involuntary manslaughter, which was dismissed as part of the plea, according to court records.
Potts is scheduled to be sentenced May 6 to six months in San Luis Obispo County Jail and three years of formal supervised probation, and is barred from working with elderly adult patients or in a senior care facility, court records show. But under the agreement with state prosecutors, his jail sentenced was stayed pending his successful completion of probation.
Potts lives out of state, his attorney, Jeffry Radding, said Monday.
Because they involved a state-licensed facility, the cases against both Potts and Skiff were prosecuted by the California Attorney General’s Office. The deputy attorney general assigned to the case, Mark Cumba, could not be reached for comment.
Potts, 64, was charged along with The Manse on Marsh’s former owner — Skiff, 55 — for the 2014 death of 65-year-old facility resident Mauricio Edgar Cardenas. The state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse determined that Cardenas, as a person diagnosed with dementia, should not have been living at the facility, which was not licensed to care for dementia patients.
Jurors heard testimony during Skiff’s roughly monthlong trial that the facility had been cited twice previously for that reason. Several employees, some of whom testified against Skiff during trial, told a state investigator that the business’ attempts to admit dementia patients was “an accident waiting to happen.”
But Skiff’s attorney argued during trial that the state’s case was based on information from “disgruntled former employees” and said that two other state agencies — the CHP and the Department of Social Services — had not found the facility was at fault for Cardenas’ death.
Potts’ plea comes about three months after a jury found Skiff guilty of both elder abuse and involuntary manslaughter. In January, Skiff was sentenced to 180 days in County Jail.
Skiff was scheduled to turn himself in to jail March 22 — but on March 11, Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen granted a defense motion to postpone his jail sentence pending results of his appeal, which was filed earlier this month, court records show.
