Victor Laszlo: May I speak to him now?
Major Strasser: You would find the conversation a trifle one-sided. Signor Ugarte is dead.
Captain Renault: I am making out the report now. We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape.
Major Strasser: You would find the conversation a trifle one-sided. Signor Ugarte is dead.
Captain Renault: I am making out the report now. We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape.
In a Police Procedural, one option for an Inciting Incident is for someone who’s been arrested to die while they’re at the police station, either in one of the cells or during an interrogation. They may be the Victim of the Week if they die at the start of the episode, or a suspect whose death in the middle of the investigations prompts a Halfway Plot Switch. It can be used as the basis for a Bottle Episode if the station needs to be sealed off while preliminary investigations are carried out, thereby confining the characters to a single location. If the death happens while the victim is alone in a cell, this may result in a Locked Room Mystery that needs to be solved.
There can be a number of reasons why a Death in Custody can happen. It can be a straightforward case of Police Brutality, a Dirty Cop or a hitman may have been paid to shut them up, or the accused may take their own life, possibly because of the consequences of the arrest or to avoid incriminating the people they're working with. The death can be part of a Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy and those responsible for the death may try and manoeuvre investigators towards a verdict of suicide to cover up their own culpability. In a Conspiracy Thriller, a Death in Custody may be part of a larger cover-up if the deceased knew too much. However, if the death is not a flat-out murder, it may instead be a case of negligence on the part of the police.
Can be used as a setup for An Aesop about Police Brutality. If the person who’s died comes from a marginalised group it may also touch on institutional racism or other prejudices in the police as a whole.
While a police station is the most typical setting for a Death in Custody, it can also happen in places like prisons. A suspicious death in an Army barracks or other military facility may play out in a similar manner. Although soldiers are not prisoners, they typically aren't able to come and go as they please, and the military at large is often regarded to have a position of responsibility for their personnel's physical safety and well-being.
Given that this trope is regularly relevant to controversial Real Life events, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Death Note: After the Anti-Kira task force arrests Higuchi, whom they believe to be the supernatural serial killer they've been hunting, he suffers a sudden fatal heart attack. Because he'd outlived his usefulness to the real Kira.
- Delicious in Dungeon: This is known to happen with prisoners of the elves, not because the elves are particularly cruel, but because elves live for a long time. Waiting several decades just for sentencing might not be a big deal for elves, but for a short-lived race like the half-foots, they may very well die of old age in that time.
- One Piece: In the Alabasta Arc, a Baroque Works Number Agent, Mr. 11, is killed by the Billions working for the same organization while in Marine custody. The reason is because the Billions are next in line behind the Frontier Agents, the Agents ranked from 6-13, in the Baroque Works hierarchal structure. As such, the Billions that found Mr. 11 decide to kill him to make room within the ranks of the Number Agents in the hopes that one of them can be promoted in his place.
Comic Books
- Judge Dredd: One issue features Dredd protecting a mob informant in custody from the Gila-Munja, a tribe of superpowered, pint-sized assassins who were hired to kill the stool pigeon. Despite Dredd fending them off, the issue ends on the reveal that he died of fear anyways.
Fan Works
- Here Comes the New Boss: Elpis wants to help the Undersiders make a Heel–Face Turn, but she's not willing to have them turn themselves in and face charges as Armsmaster requests, because with Coil still at large, they would likely be assassinated in the PRT building.
Elpis: All it takes is one mole you guys haven't caught yet, and they're dead meat.
- Karmic Epilogue: While investigating how one of Felice's subordinates has been stealing from him, the police discover that many of his funds have been shunted into Lila's accounts. She paints herself as an Unwitting Pawn unaware of her boyfriend's criminal dealings, and agrees to testify against him in exchange for avoiding jail time. However, she's kept in custody, and both she and the subordinate are ultimately murdered in order to silence them both.
- Nobody Cared: Not long after being arrested for his crimes, Vernon Dursley is found dead in the prison showers, having been beaten to death by other prisoners. It's made very clear by those who killed him that it was because Vernon was an unrepentant pedophile who bragged about his abuse of several children.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Jim Hawkins and John Silver got arrested for theft and were placed in the same holding cell as Jim's estranged dad Leland. When Jim lunged at Leland for abandoning him and his mom, the Dirty Cops came in to stop the fight and rape them, but when Leland tried to fight back, the cops smashed his head into the bars and killed him. John Silver took the fall for the death when the sheriff planned to frame Jim for it.
Films — Live-Action
- Casablanca: Signor Ugarte dies while in police custody, under the tender mercies of Major Strasser. Captain Renault dryly says they haven't yet decided "whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape."
- Cry Freedom: After Steve Biko is arrested for criticizing South Africa's Apartheid regime, he's brutally beaten by some prison guards and he dies soon afterwards from his injuries. At the very end of the film, a montage shows that the deaths of many anti-Apartheid activists who were arrested were officially recorded as suicides, killed while escaping, or killed by other inmates.
- Kick-Ass 2: Kick-Ass's father is arrested midway through the film as part of the police's crackdown on vigilantes. When Chris D'Amico learns of Kick-Ass's secret identity, and by extension that of his father, he has two of his goons bribe the cops at the station to gain access to the man's cell, and then brutally beat him to death.
- To Live and Die in L.A.: Rick Masters puts out a hit on his mule Carl Cody after Cody is arrested. Some inmates in the jail Cody is housed in attempt to kill him, but Cody fights them off until a guard can intervene.
Literature
- Discworld:
- Night Watch: Thoroughly Defied when Vimes is a Watch sergeant during a period of civil unrest. Not only does he make sure that everyone who sets foot in the Watch house has multiple credible witnesses with them, when someone is killed nearby, he has them publicly pronounced dead by a reputable doctor before bringing the body inside, just to avoid any ambiguity.
- Thud!: One dwarf drops dead while being questioned by Commander Vimes in the Watch house — either due to fright or a vengeful spirit. Fortunately, a trusted member of the dwarf community is present to vouch for Vimes.
- Marcus Didius Falco: In The Third Nero, Roman investigator Flavia Albia is working on behalf of the Imperial Palace, specifically its version of MI6 tasked with evaluating the risk posed to Rome by powerful foreign countries. It is believed that the Parthian Empire is plotting to destabilise Rome by supporting a plausible pretender to the throne, a lookalike of the dead Emperor Nero. Seeking to interview the pretender, who has been arrested and placed in the custody of the Praetorian Guard, she discovers he has been poisoned in his cell.
- A Study in Scarlet has the criminal die of a long standing heart condition while under arrest. Everyone expects it, and the guy himself dies smiling, content that his revenge has been carried out.
- Thursday Next: In the first novel, The Eyre Affair, an attempt to interrogate a henchman of Acheron Hades ends disastrously when it turns out that Hades installed something in the man that causes him to spontaneously combust when he starts blabbing about his boss.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: In "Points of Departure", the Minbari Kalain allows himself to be captured by station security, then commits suicide in his cell in hopes of sparking further conflict between Earth forces and the Minbari federation.
- The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem: Itzik is being tortured by British officer Charlie Parker, who electrocute him to death. The day after, newspapers write that he died of illness while being held. Ephraim swears to avenge him.
- Between the Lines (1992): "Nothing Personal" sees Tony, Harry and Mo being called in to St Helens police station to investigate the apparent suicide of Joey Pearce, a young Black teenager who was being held in the cells after being charged with drug possession.
- Burn Notice: In "Old Friends", Michael gets the Czech assassin Jan who had been hunting him arrested by the FBI. Mike is hoping the FBI can learn something he couldn't when he interrogated Jan, but the next morning, Sam says folks from a mystery agency came by to whisk him off to a Black Site and "found" Jan hanged by his shoelaces in his holding cell. They infer that the people who burned Mike had Jan killed.
- Cobra 2020: Downplayed in season three. Whilst protesting at an Arms Fair, Polly Wright is hit over the head by a police officer, and neglected after her arrest, leading to no one hearing her talk about how much pain she is in. By the time they check on her, she's already unconscious. Polly does manage to survive long enough to be rushed to hospital, but it's made clear by this point it's too late and she dies of the injuries.
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation:
- In one episode, a violent man is being brought in as a suspect in a murder at a casino, and as Grissom is questioning him, he attacks without warning. Officers come to Grissom's aid, peeling the suspect off of him. Grissom suffers a bruise to his throat (which the suspect's sister notes when Grissom is talking to her) but the suspect suddenly keels over dead, with no discernible cause, even when Doc Robbins examines him.
- A suspect dies after being tased when he suddenly and unexpectedly bursts into flames. To make matters worse, before they tased him, Brass actually issued the phrase, "Light 'im up." which was caught on the security video, and which the undersheriff says will give the lawyers for the man's family a field day in court. The investigation (which included a cameo appearance by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters) concluded that an officer who attempted to pepper spray the suspect was using a non-regulation alcohol-based pepper spray, which ignited when the charge from the taser reacted with the flammable substance.
- CSI: Miami: In the episode "Point of Impact", a suspect dies in police custody after suffering a diffuse axonal injury in a car accident. In layman's terms, his brain was fatally shaken up in the accident hours before his death, with the coroner essentially stating that he had been a walking dead man.
- CSI: NY: While being interrogated during the investigation of his head coach's death, a high school wrestler collapses and dies while in Det. Flack's sole custody. Flack is put on desk duty pending an inquiry into whether or not he caused the teenager's death. The boy's autopsy reveals he had managed to swallow a whole bottle of pills in the brief time he was allowed to get dressed (he'd been in the middle of practice at the time he was picked up).
- Death in Paradise: In "Unlike Father, Unlike Son", the Victim of the Week is a prisoner murdered in his cell at the courthouse. The murderer was the prison warden, who witnessed a murder the victim got away with, but couldn't come forward because he and that victim were having an affair.
- Diagnosis: Murder: In "X Marks the Murder", Serial Killer Michael Dern, aka The Casanova Killer informs Mark after his capture that one victim, Dusty Wollman, was in fact not one of his victims. After some time, Mark and Steve return to his jail cell for more answers, only to find he has been shivved in his cell. This was done by another person on the orders of Dr. Al Blank, the man who actually murdered Dusty on orders of lawyer Andrew King.
- Doctor Who: In "The Ambassadors of Death" convinced to turn on the conspiracy responsible for abducting the alien Ambassadors, Doctor Lenox turns himself into UNIT custody to tell the Brigadier where Liz is being held. However, whilst locked in a cell someone smuggles a radiation reactor rod into his cell, killing him. Thus establishing they had infiltrated the Space Agency.
- Grimm: In "Bad Teeth", recurring season 1 villain Akira Kimura is arrested after an unsuccessful attack on Nick in his house. Realising Kimura has information about him he'd rather didn't reach Nick, Police Captain Sean Renard has him poisoned before Nick can talk to him.
- Law & Order:
- "Cruel and Unusual": Starts with a kid being arrested when trying to steal a man's watch. While in a holding cell, he begins hitting his head on the wall, and when a police officer tries to restrain him, he suddenly dies. Turns out that the death was not caused by the officer; a bruise on his neck caused a blood clot which ultimately made its way to his brain, killing him.
- "Birthright": A young woman with a history of child abuse (as both victim and abuser) is found dead in her cell. The resulting investigation leads to the discovery of a nurse practitioner who is sterilizing women without their knowledge.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: At the end of "Taken", it is revealed the initial suspect arrested for the rape of a minor died in jail, attacked by other inmates for being a suspected pedophile. This is after the investigation uncovered that the fact that the "victim" was in her 20s, the sex being consensual, and the "victim" was part of a con artist family who faked the attack in order to claim damages against the hotel the incident occurred in.
- Life on Mars (2006): The seventh episode of the first series follows Sam’s attempt to investigate a suspicious death of a young man who died in his cell at the station after being arrested for a minor drug offence.
- Monsters: In one episode, a wealthy and cruel American tourist is imprisoned in a South American country for killing a child in a hit-and-run. He soon discovers his cellmate is a Humanoid Abomination who eventually murders him. It's implied the prison administration keeps him appeased by feeding him their worst offenders.
- NCIS: The episode "Jeopardy" starts with a drug-dealing suspect dead in the home office's elevator with Ziva. Things then get complicated when the suspect's brother takes Director Shepard hostage to force NCIS to release him.
- New Tricks: The death of the teenage Anthony Lane, who died due to drug complications whilst in police custody forms a large part of Brian Lane's backstory. Struggling with alcohol at the time after arresting him Brian had left Anthony in the care of three other officers whilst he went for a drink. Following his death and the resultant scandal, the other officers all blamed Brian claiming he failed to book Anthony in properly in his haste to leave, leading to no one checking on him, whilst Brian, despite accepting Anthony's death as his fault, always maintained that he followed all the procedures before leaving and that their was a conspiracy against him, leading to him leaving the force in disgrace. His agreement to join UCOS is in large part due to his desire to figure out what actually happened to Anthony. In season ten with the last member, now having made it to a senior rank on the brink of retirement, Brian punches him at his retirement party launching himself into official disciplinary proceedings hoping the investigation will be the last attempt to discover the truth of what happened to Anthony. Sure enough, he does uncover evidence that his death was due to police negligence on behalf of the custody officers who then conspired to frame him. However, fearing a cover-up, Brian instead passes it to Anthony's mother leading to a public scandal and himself being fired.
- Once Upon a Time (2011): At the end of the third season, Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West, loses her powers and is defeated by the main cast, then is tossed in a cell in the Storybrooke police department. Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold enters her cell and stabs her with a mystical dagger. This causes her body to turn into porcelain and crack apart. The next episode, Emma Swan, the local sheriff, goes to investigate and cannot find Zelena anywhere in the station.
- Person of Interest:
- "Pilot": It introduces the Dirty Cop antagonists of the series; an innocent victim is killed in prison by agents of "HR" in order to cover up a crime he didn't commit. The number of the episode, District Attorney Diane Hansen, is helping cover it up.
- "Prisoner's Dilemma": An attempt is made on Reese's life after he and several other highly-trained mercenaries who happen to fit the description of "Man in a Suit" are arrested.
- Prime Suspect: In "Operation Nadine" following a round of interrogation failing to get seventeen-year-old Tony Allen to spill what he knows about the murdered young woman they found, running out of patience DS Bob Oswald has him locked away hoping a night in the cells will spook him into telling. Instead, the traumatised and claustrophobic Tony has a breakdown, leading to committing suicide. Tennison is naturally furious upon being informed, and whilst the Coroner does overall absolve the police of culpability, his death only causes them more problems getting the local Caribbean population to trust them with solving the murder.
- Psych: In "Lassie Did a Bad, Bad Thing", By-the-Book Cop Detective Lassiter is incensed that the gang leader he worked for years to bring down was able to cut a deal with the feds and will go into Witness Protection instead of facing punishment for his crimes. Before he can be transferred, the lights go out and the gang leader is found shot dead in his holding cell, a gun in Lassiter's hand. Shawn and Gus must work to prove Lassiter's innocence, eventually discovering that he was framed by another detective who silenced the gang leader lest he be revealed as a Dirty Cop.
- Sight Unseen (2024): In the episode "Leo", a police informant inexplicably ingests a lethal amount of fentanyl during an interrogation and dies. As Detective Leo Li prepared the coffee that the informant drank just before his death, and as Li has a history with the informant from his days in Vice, he is assumed to be the chief suspect, and thus Tess and Jake must prove his innocence.
- Silent Witness: "Fatal Error" involves tensions flying during the investigation into the deaths of the Juttla brothers, two young Sikhs who were found dead in custody. The police claimed that the older brother hanged himself with his own turban and bludgeoned his brother to death when he attempted to stop him. Sam's initial autopsy supports the Police's version, however, growing suspicion that the police actually murdered the brothers and then staged the events, leads to the prosecution having Leo carry out a secondary autopsy, who finds potential evidence that casts doubt on the official narrative. Whilst openly believing the police murdered the brothers, Leo starts to grow suspicious when the prosecution won't give him access to their medical records. Managing to get hold of them through his own contacts, he discovers that the older brother suffered from depression and had attempted suicide twice before. Thus Leo is forced to turn it over to the defence, its emergence so late in the trial wrecks the prosecution's case and leads to the police officers being acquitted despite it still being ambiguous which version of events actually happened.
- Twin Peaks: Laura Palmer's killer, after being thrown in a cell and spending a bit of time ranting, beats his head against the door of the cell before Dale Cooper, Sheriff Truman, Hawk and Albert can get in to stop him. Leland Palmer had been used up by Killer BOB, who, while in control of Leland, effectively forced him to kill himself; Leland spends his last moments weeping over the fact that he killed both Laura and "that girl Theresa" and being comforted by Dale Cooper, who helps him to find peace in his impending death, before dying in Dale's arms.
Music
- Alice's Restaurant: According to Arlo Guthrie's account of the situation, Officer Obie worked hard to prevent suicides of people in his custody, even those accused of minor crimes like littering:
"Obie said he was going to put us in the cell. Said, "Kid I'm going to put you in the cell. I want your wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?" He said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?" Obie said he was making sure, and friends, Obie was, 'cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars, roll out the roll the toilet paper out the window slide down the roll and have an escape."
Video Games
- Alan Wake II: During the Wham Episode that is Chapter 6 of Saga's story, Jaako Koskela, arrested for his involvement with the Cult of the Tree murders, is killed in his cell after Scratch walks through the bars and throws him so hard against the opposite wall he's instantly killed.
- Dragalia Lost: At the end of Ryszarda's Adventurer Story, the Bishop responsible for framing Ryszarda for murder is apprehended and taken into custody. When interrogated though, he doesn't reveal anything and instead pulls a Spiteful Suicide.
- Octopath Traveler II: Vados the Architect is arrested for being a Serial Killer and assassin, and brought to the headquarters of the Sacred Guard for questioning. He's later murdered and the papers showing his arrival at their headquarters are destroyed, on the orders of a corrupt Sacred Guard leader who's interested in a page of a heretical text he keeps on his person.
- Persona 5: Akechi betrays the Phantom Thieves by having the police ambush them, capturing Joker in the process and bringing him to the police station to be interrogated by Sae. While there, Joker attempts to get Sae on his side despite his memories being hazy from being drugged by the officers. If Joker fails to do this, after Sae leaves, Akechi will arrive in the room and assassinate him while staging it as a suicide. However, if Joker succeeds, he will remember the Phantom Thieves' plan to survive the interrogation and he and Futaba will convince Sae to trick Akechi into killing the cognitive Joker in her Palace while the real one fakes his death.
- Resident Evil 2 (Remake): This occurs specifically in the remake. Corrupt police chief Irons locks investigative reporter Ben Bertolucci in a basement cell in the police department. Rookie cop Leon Kennedy finds him down there, who begs to be released, but Mr. X, a creation of Umbrella Corporation, kills him.
- Warframe: Failing a rescue mission causes this to happen, as your rescue target is either murdered by an automatic execution sequence in Grineer and Corpus missions, choked to death by Infested spores on the mission on Eris, or destroyed by an ancient Orokin security system on Lua.
- Wing Commander: After the Big Bad Tolwyn and his horrid eugenics plot is exposed, he hangs himself in his jailcell before he can be executed for his crimes.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown: This is the inevitable result for any alien that is successfully captured with the Arc Thrower. It's ambiguous whether the process of interrogation involves a lethal level of torture, or if Dr. Vahlen disposes of the subject after she's done researching it in order to be able to conduct the autopsy.
Visual Novels
- The second episode of Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit sees the culprit of the first episode, Bronco Knight, being found dead in the prison, when he was supposed to be in the Detention Center awaiting his murder trial. It turns out he was murdered by the prison warden Fifi Laguarde, who feared that Knight was a minion of another prisoner, Bodhidharma Kanis, who was blackmailing her. She snuck the body out to the prison in an attempt to frame Kanis for the death. In the fifth episode it was revealed that the evidence supposedly connecting Knight and Kanis was faked, in order to exploit Laguarde's paranoia and trick her into murdering Knight.
- of the Devil: Case 0 opens with Morgan dramatically declaring her client will die in prison if she doesn't do her job correctly. As Carlos stands accused of being the Heartbreak Killer, who's managed to flout the State's heavy surveillance, she's not the only one who's concerned; her opponent London encourages her to take a Plea Bargain, implying the State will order his death in this fashion otherwise.
Web Animation
- Revenge Films: In the epilogue of "My father-in-law fell asleep while smoking a cigarette, causing our house to burn down..."
Sara's father-in-law dies of a stroke in prison after he got arrested for charges of arson upon being found out to have dropped a lit cigarette on the sofa on purpose rather than by accident as he claimed. From there on, the body's whereabouts are unknown.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: Invoked in interpretations of the canon where the Foundation recruits prisoners from Death Row to act as D-Class Personnel. Some stories mention that said D-Class have had their disappearances covered up, with the public-facing story being that they were Driven to Suicide or faced some sort of accident.
Western Animation
- What If?: In "What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?", Hawkeye is arrested by S.H.I.E.L.D. after accidentally shooting and killing Thor. Before anyone is able to question what happened, he mysteriously drops dead almost immediately.
