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Letters to the Editor

Keeping SLO County Jail inmate in a restraint chair for 46 hours was ‘cruel and unusual’

Andrew Chaylon Holland, pictured here in a 2015 family photograph, died Jan. 22 after a blood clot formed after he was restrained in a chair for nearly two days in San Luis Obispo County Jail.
Andrew Chaylon Holland, pictured here in a 2015 family photograph, died Jan. 22 after a blood clot formed after he was restrained in a chair for nearly two days in San Luis Obispo County Jail. Courtesy

Keeping anyone in a restraint chair for more than 40 hours constitutes cruel and unusual punishment by any measure, and readily would produce the condition of a fatal venous embolism of the legs which passed to the inmate’s lungs and caused his death.

Peter Bresler, M.D., Los Osos

This story was originally published April 18, 2017 at 2:06 PM with the headline "Keeping SLO County Jail inmate in a restraint chair for 46 hours was ‘cruel and unusual’."

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