El Dorado County, California — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Adult Main Detention Facility (El Dorado County Jail); South Lake Tahoe Jail Facility

Operated byEl Dorado County Sheriff's Office
County publishes a jail nameCould not be verified — the county domain returned HTTP 403 to this session
Facilities named in the state inspection letterAdult Main Detention Facility (BSCC 0670, Type II), South Lake Tahoe Jail Facility (0680, Type II), El Dorado County Court Holding (0682)
What was triedhttps://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/ ; https://edcgov.us/ ; https://www.edso.org/ ; https://www.edcgov.us/Government/sheriff ; https://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/Public-Safety-Justice — all returned HTTP 403 Access Denied
Rated capacity461 beds across 2 facilities

Source: BSCC — 2025-2026 Comprehensive Inspection, El Dorado County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

0/10Closed

✗The jail is named — not published
✗Who is in custody — not published
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✗PREA audits — not published
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what El Dorado County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-23. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds461 rated capacity across two facilities (BSCC, data through June 2026): El Dorado County Jail 303, South Lake Tahoe Jail 158

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Jeff Leikauf

Title as publishedSheriff
Coroner roleNot confirmed — the BSCC 2025-2026 inspection letter of January 27, 2026 addresses him as 'Sheriff', not 'Sheriff-Coroner'
Office address200 Industrial Drive, Placerville, CA 95667

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: California State Sheriffs' Association — Sheriff's Directory · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

Twelve-department court split between the Placerville (Main Street and Building C) and South Lake Tahoe branches; Dept. 6 was vacant on the posted assignment list. Leanne K. Mayberry sits as Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court. The court also posts fee and bail schedules at https://www.eldorado.courts.ca.gov/general-information/fees-bail-schedules .

Superior Court of California, County of El Dorado — Presiding Judge

Michael J. McLaughlin

Superior Court of California, County of El Dorado — Assistant Presiding Judge

Jamie L. Pesce

Superior Court of California, County of El Dorado — Criminal pre-trial and criminal trial departments

Jamie L. Pesce (Dept. 1)
Mark A. Ralphs (Dept. 2)
Michael J. McLaughlin (Dept. 3)
Stephanie Shirkey (Dept. 7)

Still needed

The county's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-23

The County Commissioners

They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
The boardBoard of County Commissioners
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Every check is marked 'no' because the county domain (eldoradocounty.ca.gov, Akamai-fronted, which edcgov.us and edso.org both redirect to) returned HTTP 403 to this session on every path tried. These are unverified, not verified absences.
The BSCC 2025-2026 comprehensive inspection (facilities inspected November 11-12, 2025) identified no items of noncompliance.
The BSCC report notes the main facility was constructed with single cells under 1980 standards, with a later addition under 1988 standards; no construction year, cost or funding source is stated.
BSCC rated capacity is published by the state, not by the county: https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/RC-of-Type-II-III-IV-Local-Adult-Detention-Facilities-Dec-2006-through-June-2026-for-web-as-of-7.28.26.xlsx
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district. The county's own board page could not be opened from this session; the board's video, agenda and minutes archive is reachable.

What California law requires

We could not find a death-in-custody page for El Dorado County.

No page found

No PC 10008 / AB 2761 page could be opened. The Sheriff's Office lives on the county domain, which refused this session at every path tried: https://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/ , https://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/robots.txt , https://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/Public-Safety-Justice , https://edcgov.us/ and https://www.edso.org/ (which redirects to https://www.eldoradocounty.ca.gov/Public-Safety-Justice/Safety-Justice/sheriff) all returned HTTP 403 Access Denied. This is an access failure on this end, not a finding that the county publishes nothing. A page may exist somewhere we did not look. If you know of one, tell us and we will correct this.

—The agency with custodial responsibility
—The county where the death occurred
—The facility — and where inside it
—Race, gender and age
—The date of death
—Custodial status — awaiting arraignment, awaiting trial, or incarcerated
—Manner and means of death

California Penal Code § 10008, enacted by AB 2761 and in force since January 2023, requires the agency with custodial responsibility to post these seven items on its own website within ten days of a death in custody, and to update them within thirty days if the facts change. California is the only state in the country with this duty. Checked 2026-08-23. This records what is published, nothing more.

The record

9 people have died in the El Dorado County jail since 2016.

5 by suicide

1 illness or medical

9 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them6 of 9

Most recent death on the state's record2025-03-06

Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in El Dorado County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).

How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.

The sheriff is on your ballot

The county elections office runs the polling place in El Dorado County and prints the ballot the sheriff’s name is on. Links from the California Secretary of State and vote.gov.

Names verified 2026-08-23 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered