(3-4-16) A physically healthy 24 year-old man is put in jail for taking $5 worth of snack food from a convenience store. Jailers know that he has a serious mental illness. Yet for 101 days, he never leaves his cell. He never showers. He often is covered with his own feces and urine is found on the floor of his isolation cell. His weight drops NOT 34 pounds, as has been previously reported, but 46 pounds, from 190 pounds to 144 pounds. An autopsy shows he suffered a heart attack brought on by him starving himself to death.
Yet, Lt. Col. Eugene Taylor III, assistant superintendent of Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, said last week that the jail had conducted a thorough investigation and found no evidence of any wrongdoing or mishandling of this prisoner’s case by his staff.
“To us, it’s an unbelievable tragedy, but it was not a circumstance where it could have been prevented by the Hampton Roads Regional Jail,” Taylor was quoted as saying by reporter Sarah Kleiner in a story published Friday by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Taylor said the jail would not make its internal investigation — that cleared itself — public, but he defended the jail’s treatment of Jamycheal Mitchell, whose body was found dead in his cell last August. Taylor told Kleiner that Mitchell was offered a shower every third day but never accepted it. He had a chance to spend an hour five days a week in the gym, playing basketball, running or interacting with other inmates but he opted to stay alone in the cell.
Taylor also revealed that Mitchell was held in a cell that was monitored by an officer every half hour and that medical personnel in the jail were required to check on him daily. In any given day, Mitchell was supposed to have been observed 49 times by correctional officers or nurses.
49 times.
But Taylor said no red flags were raised and no one on his staff realized that Mitchell was starving himself because food trays that were passed into the cell each day were returned empty. Taylor also questioned if Mitchell actually “starved to death” in jail.
“We have no indication that he lost so much weight that his heart stopped,” Taylor said. The jailer did not explain why he disagreed with a state medical examiner’s autopsy that found Mitchell died of “probable cardiac arrhythmia accompanying wasting syndrome of unknown etiology.” Wasting syndrome is when a person loses more than 10 percent of their weight in a short period from not eating. Taylor, who does not have a medical degree, said he didn’t believe that ruling.
At the risk of appearing cruel, I’d like to ask Taylor if he would have been satisfied with the explanation that he gave to the Richmond paper if Mitchell would have been his child. If his son had been held in a jail cell 101 days without ever taking a shower or coming out to exercise and had lost 46 pounds would he believe that his son’s death in jail “was not a circumstance where it could have been prevented”?
Now here is another sobering thought.
No one in the jail was disciplined. No one was fired. There were no reprimands put into anyone’s file and no policies have been changed. Meanwhile, Taylor remains in charge of 244 other inmates who have diagnosed mental illnesses.
If Taylor really believes that his employees aren’t culpable and there is no need for the jail to change any of its practices, then why will he not release the results of his internal investigation that cleared everyone?
