(8-10-16) The office of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Monday cleared state Inspector General June W. Jennings and her top aide of any wrongdoing after a whistleblower complaint alleged that her office failed to thoroughly investigate the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, who died in a Virginia jail waiting for a hospital bed. McAuliffe’s chief of staff, Paul Reagan, dismissed the complaint without contacting or interviewing the three whistleblowers who filed it, including Cathy Hill, an employee in Jennings’ office. I thought it only fair to give Ms. Hill a forum to voice her concerns, especially after she recounted her personal struggle with Post Traumatic Stress to me caused by a sexual assault.)

My Story

By Cathy Hill

After approximately a 28 year-career in state service to persons with behavioral health and developmental disabilities, it saddens me to think I may not be able to complete my last few years with the Commonwealth of Virginia because the current leadership of the Office of the State Inspector General (OSIG) has actively undermined my ability to serve in good conscience.

The inadequate investigation into the death of Jamycheal Mitchell conducted by the OSIG Director of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, Priscilla Smith, and publicly supported by the State Inspector General, June Jennings, became the “last straw” for me and my colleagues, Ann White and William Thomas. The proclamation that the investigation was thorough and complete, coupled with other questionable practices, led the three of us to file a whistleblower complaint in July. After considerable discussion, we decided to share our thoughts and trust that our experiences and concerns provided in good faith, as established by law, would be investigated and a suitable judgment rendered so that the remedies necessary to correct the cited practices can occur.

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(8-9-16) Hours after the Virginia Governor’s office announced yesterday that it had cleared state Inspector general June W. Jennings in a whistle-blower complaint, new questions surfaced about her office’s investigation into the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24-year-old African American diagnosed with schizophrenia who died in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail last August waiting to be sent to Eastern State Hospital.

Travis Fain, a reporter at The Daily Press in Hampton Roads, reported that Jennings’ husband, William D. Jennings, is a manager at Eastern State Hospital, and Priscilla Smith, who oversaw the State Office of Inspector General probe into Mitchell’s death, had previously worked there as a senior manager.

Mitchell spent 101 days in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail waiting to be transferred to the hospital in Williamsburg. After his death, it was revealed that paperwork sent to hospital requesting that Mitchell be transferred there had been tossed into a drawer by a hospital employee and forgotten until after his body was discovered.

Although neither Jennings’ husband nor OSIG Supervisor Smith were directly involved in the hospital’s mishandling of Mitchell’s transfer request, Priscilla Smith’s supervision of the Mitchell investigation placed her in a position where she was investigating her past employer (Eastern State Hospital ) where the husband of her boss (June Jennings) is currently employed.

Reporter Fain wrote:

Requests for (interviews with) Priscilla Smith and June Jennings, made through the inspector general’s press office, were not granted, but spokeswoman Julie Grimes emailed a statement, saying William Jennings has been a career state employee and that his employment at Eastern State “does not represent any conflict of interest.”

G. Douglas Bevelacqua, a former inspector general for behavioral health, who has been critical of the office’s handling of the Mitchell case, disagreed in an email to me.

The fact June Jennings’s husband was the Director of Quality Management at Eastern State Hospital during the OSIG’s investigation of Jamycheal Mitchell’s death is a clear conflict of interest. Also, the fact that Pricilla Smith was his predecessor in that position at Eastern State Hospital until a few months before the system failed and Mitchell starved to death in jail because of “clerical errors” is another clear conflict of interest.

Questions about possible conflicts of interest are the latest in a barrage of troubling revelations swirling around Mitchell’s death. Click to continue…

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn is willing to modify language in his mental health bill to ease concerns about gun ownership. 

(8-8-16)  “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” Mark Twain quipped when a major newspaper ran his obituary while he was still alive. 

It appears the same can be said about Rep. Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. 

In a recent blog, I reported that a dust up about guns had doomed a Senate bill sponsored by Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that is a companion to the Pennsylvania Republican’s House bill. A much modified version of Rep. Tim Murphy’s bill was approved in the House earlier this year by a 422 to 2 vote. But until the Senate approves its version, the legislation can’t be sent to the President to be signed into law. 

As first reported in the Hill newspaper, the Senate bill hit a wall when Senator John Cornyn (R-TX.) moved to merge his mental health bill into the Murphy-Cassidy bill.  Senate Democrats, including Senators Charles Schumer (NY) and Harry Reid (NV.) took issue with parts of Cornyn’s bill that dealt with gun ownership. 

Since posting my blog, I’ve learned that Cornyn has offered to drop the most controversial gun provision in his bill and modify the wording of a second stumbling block. These moves could create a Lazarus moment and make it possible for the Senate bill to move forward and be put to a vote in September. Click to continue…

 

(8-3-16) The death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24 year-old African American diagnosed with schizophrenia, has taken yet another troubling turn. Officials at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail have acknowledged that security footage recorded outside his cell exists after first announcing it had been taped over because it didn’t show any “criminality or negligence” and there was no reason to keep it.

Mitchell’s body was found August 19 in his cell. A state medical examiner ruled that he had suffered a heart attack caused by starvation during the 101 days that he was detained inside the jail waiting for an open bed in a Virginia state hospital. Mitchell had been arrested for allegedly taking $5 worth of snacks from a convenience store without paying. Mitchell was 6 foot, 1 inch tall and weighted 190 pounds when he was arrested. While in jail, his weight dropped to 144 pounds.

Sarah Kleiner and Katherine B. Evans, two reporters at the Richmond Times –Dispatch were the first to learn that a camera in the jail had recorded footage that showed the front of Mitchell’s cell. On April 1, they filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the jail to make that footage public. The recordings would show if Mitchell was fed, whether his food tray was returned empty, and how many times guards and the jail’s nurse checked on him and entered his cell.

On April 6^th, Jail Superintendent David L. Simons wrote this response to the reporters:

“There is no security footage taken outside of Mr. Mitchell’s cell during his incarceration at Hampton Roads Regional Jail.” 

Lt. Col. Eugene Taylor III, the jail’s assistant superintendent, was quoted by the newspaper in a follow-up interview saying that he and one of the jail’s internal investigators were the only people who saw the video before it was taped over.

Now this is where things become troubling. How did Kleiner learn about the footage?

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(7-28-16) Rep. Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act was passed by a 422-2 vote in the House earlier this year, but it’s now treading water and the prospect of it being signed into law this session is fleeting.

The trouble has nothing to do with the contents of Murphy’s much altered bill. As first reported by Peter Sullivan in The Hill, this time around the fight is in the Senate and it is about guns.

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