(Roberto Roldan / LPM)This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by phone at 988, or online at https://988lifeline.org/.A directory of mental health providers in Jefferson County is available at me ntalhealthlou.com.The death of Juan Miguel Munoz Penalver in the city jail last February is still under investigation and city officials have said little about the incident.But a death certificate obtained by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting reveals for the first time Munoz Penalver’s cause of death – and raises more questions about what happened to him behind bars.Penalver’s death certificate lists his cause of death as acute psychosis, “due to (or as a consequence of)” dehydration from “willful/self-imposed refusal of hydration, nutrition and medical care.”The manner of death is listed as suicide.“It’s a death of dehydration in a first-world country. How can that be?” said Jon Little, an attorney representing Munoz Penalver’s family.Munoz Penalver is one of twenty-three people who’ve died in the Louisville jail’s custody since 2021, according to the ACLU of Kentucky.Louisville Metro Police and Louisville Metro Department of Corrections are separately investigating Munoz Penalver’s death. Major Jason Logsdon, a spokesperson for the jail, declined to provide additional comment due to the ongoing investigation. So did Mayor Craig Greenberg’s office.Louisville Metro Council ordered an audit of Louisville’s jail operations in 2022. The report said key problems included inadequate staffing, a “woefully inadequate antiquated” jail facility, and a need for better coordination between medical staff and corrections officers. The audit also said paying better attention to “basic security protocols, especially going into cells and dorms as required and ensuring that the inmates are well,” may have helped prevent some of the deaths that had happened by then.A few days before the audit was publicly released, city officials said they would expand access to mental health care in the jail, in part by reworking the intake process. They also decided to contract with a new jail health care provider, although last week the jail announced it plans to switch providers again. Also this year, LMDC Chief Jerry Collins presented a new staffing plan to council members in March.Little said he knows Louisville jail is understaffed and said it seems Munoz Penalver was forgotten about while he was behind bars.Records released to KyCIR by Louisville Metro Government say Munoz Penalver attempted suicide and was placed on suicide watch for 24 hours.After that he was subject to “checks every 30 minutes” by staff while locked in a single cell, according to the records. The documents don’t indicate how long those half-hour checks were meant to last or if they happened on the night he died.The records also say Munoz Penalver poured out provided water, clogged his toilet with food containers and refused medical help and medication in jail.Police records say jail video shows that on the night of Feb. 25, Munoz Penalver laid down in front of his cell door and “did not appear to move at all afterwards.” Jail staff found him a little over five hours later, unresponsive. Emergency personnel said he was dead at the scene.Deaths due to dehydration have happened in other U.S. jails. A 2025 news investigation by The New Yorker and Investigative Reporting Lab at Yale identified “more than fifty cases of individuals who, in recent years, had starved to death, died of dehydration, or lost their lives to related medical crises in county jails.” They found the people typically were incarcerated pretrial, meaning they faced criminal charges but hadn’t been convicted, and had trouble with mental health.“I wish I could tell you that this is the first time I've ever heard this story, but it's not,” said Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California Santa Cruz who has studied the psychological consequences of confinement in jail and prison for decades.Mental illness can drive people inward, so they don’t say or do much, he said. They may even stop taking care of themselves.But Haney said nothing eliminates a jail’s responsibility for ensuring the people in their charge, who have very little control over their day-to-day circumstances, receive sufficient mental health and medical care.He said Munoz Penalver’s death is an “extreme case.”“It is still relatively rare for somebody to be allowed to waste away in jail or prison,” he said. But situations like this do happen amid the broader, national crisis that has emerged since U.S. jails and prisons – many of which are chronically understaffed – became the “default placement of the mentally ill” even though they’re “uniquely ill-suited” to treat them.Munoz Penalver, according to city records and public statements by a family member, experienced mental health problems.Born in Cuba, Munoz Penalver moved to the United States in 2024. Some of his family lives in Louisville. He worked as a barber, according to the death certificate. His stepmother, Ivelipse Munoz, said in an online post that “he was going through one of his episodes” the day he was arrested. Juan Miguel Munoz Penalver(Ivelipse Munoz / GoFundMe)“Juan Miguel – Miguel, as many knew him – was a young man with dreams, plans, and a future ahead of him,” his stepmother wrote in a Facebook post. “Yes, he struggled with mental health challenges, but that never took away the value of his life.A judge set his bond at $20,000 for an alleged assault that occurred on February 14. He also was subject to a detainer by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which asks jails to hold immigrants for an extra 48 hours beyond their scheduled release so federal agents can take custody of them.For several years, Louisville’s jail gave ICE shorter notice before releasing immigrants from lock-up, but Mayor Craig Greenberg changed policy last summer to fully grant the 48-hour requests after President Donald Trump’s administration pressured the city about it.The ACLU of Kentucky opposed Greenberg’s decision and has consistently advocated for other jail reforms. Executive director Amber Duke said she recently met Munoz Penalver’s family, and they and the ACLU all have questions about whether staff at the jail properly monitored him.“His mom showed me videos on her phone of him healthy and playing basketball, you know, a week or two before his death,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking to me that a 21-year-old person could die of dehydration when they're under the care and custody of the government.”The Louisville jail can provide some mental health services to people incarcerated there, but Duke said it isn’t equipped to help people going through a severe mental health crisis.Since the string of jail deaths started several years ago, Duke said Metro Corrections has made improvements, such as making naloxone medication, which can reverse an opioid overdose, accessible inside the jail and making safety upgrades to cells.“But the thing that has been persistent over the years of this crisis is that the facility has been grossly overcrowded, and the jail is under capacity in terms of corrections officers,” she said. “It's just a recipe for disaster.”Metro Corrections can’t fix the overcrowding problem alone, Duke said. Fewer people need to be locked up in the first place. She suggested Louisville Metro Police could issue more citations in lieu of making arrests in some cases, for example, and prosecutors could think twice before asking for an arrest warrant when someone misses their court date.“We have to decide as a community that we're going to do something differently,” she said. ...read more read less