After all these years writing about mental health issues, it takes a lot to really get to me. But sometimes I read something and I get so upset, I just have to take a walk around the office to deal with the way it makes me feel.
The case of Timothy Souders (pictured) is one such instance. Souders was a mentally ill man, deeply suicidal, who landed in jail after repeated infractions, instead of in an appropriate healthcare facillity. Sadly typical. But Souders died in jail after being strapped down to a metal table and left there, naked, without meds, as he got progressively more psychotic, for four days. I won't get into all the gory details, but please do read the reportage two stories after the jump. One is about Souders' case in a more general sense; the second is about the surveillance videos of Tim dying on the table.
Thanks to advocate Fran Hazam for alerting me to cases like this one.
JEFF GERRITT: Prison death demands a fix September 1, 2006
Timothy Joe Souders died on Aug. 6, after spending most of his last four days bound naked to a steel bed in four-point restraints, soaked in his own urine. At 21, Souders' life was tragically short and, in many ways, just plain tragic. Mentally ill and unable to get help, Souders ended up alone and dead in a hot, segregated cell at Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson.
His parents did not know how he died. Steven Souders and Theresa Vaughn of Adrian learned the details two weeks later from my Aug. 20 report in the Free Press. A woman who played bingo at the hall where Timothy Souders worked as a caller brought acopy of the paper to his memorial service that day. Steven Souders, 41, a journeyman machine repair worker, said the Michigan Department of Corrections told him his son died in his sleep.
MDOC denies that, but Timothy Souders' death helped push Gov. Jennifer Granholm to order an overdue independent review of prison health care. His story touched a nerve in Michigan, which has closed most of its mental health facilities during the last few decades. Thousands of the state's mentally ill have ended up on the street or in homeless shelters, jails or prisons.
Geoffrey Fieger's law firm will file a wrongful death lawsuit against MDOC employees and Correctional Medical Services Inc., attorney Paul Broschay told me this week. CMS is the private, Missouri-based company under contract for primary care physicians and other services in Michigan state prisons.
I never met Timothy Souders, but the photos of him that his parents showed me in Adrian last week looked nothing like the bloated mug shot of prisoner No. 580074 that ran on MDOC's Web site. At 5-foot-8, he looked fit, handsome and happy, about 60 pounds lighter than the 235 he weighed in prison, and well-toned from work as a union roofer. Souders had dropped out of high school and moved out of his parents' house when he was 17. Because of his mental disability, he received Social Security benefits.
Before he was arrested in March 2005, Souders worked part time calling bingo games at the Lenawee County fairgrounds. He was popular with the older players, who called him Opie, after the character on "The Andy Griffith Show." Senior citizens and young kids were his heart. In many ways, Souders was a boy inside a man's body.
"When Tim was on his meds, he was a good person, a loving, caring person," said Vaughn, 40.
But Souders had a troubled side. His record showed five misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct, assault and battery and alcohol and marijuana charges. On March 4, 2005, he stole two paintball guns from a Meijer store in Adrian and threatened a police officer with a knife.
"Go ahead, kill me," Souders said before an officer stunned him with a Taser. Souders was charged with resisting arrest and assault. After police took him to jail, Souders stabbed himself in the stomach seven times with a knife he had concealed. Later, he tried to hang himself with a noose made with fabric from jail coveralls. He was charged with malicious destruction of police property.
Souders was screaming for help, but no one was listening. He went to prison on Nov. 1, having received a one- to four-year bit for assault, resisting arrest and destroying police property. It turned into a death sentence.
Prison was no place for Souders, who had a bipolar disorder. He took medications for multiple conditions, including manic depression, psychosis and hypertension. Souders received seven misconduct reports: four for simply being out of place and another three for fighting, assaulting a prisoner and destroying property.
Roughly 24% of Michigan's nearly 50,000 inmates have a history of mental illness, Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said. MDOC must do a better job of accommodating them, including improving communication between security and health care staff, and between Corrections and the Department of Community Health.
Mental health staff at the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility tried to transfer Souders to Huron Valley Center in Ypsilanti, a psychiatric hospital for prisoners, but a transfer coordinator working for Community Health failed to move him. The state Health Department has reassigned that coordinator and is investigating the incident. Still, someone from Corrections, knowing Souders' condition, should have had enough sense or sympathy to pick up a phone and try to get him out of that segregated cell in Jackson. At one point, the heat index probably reached 106, and medications put Souders at high risk for heat-related injury or death.
MDOC maintains procedures were followed. If that's true, the department needs to take a serious look at those procedures.
"I want to know this is never going to happen to another human being," said Vaughn, Souders' mother.
In the end, the state must be held accountable for this unnecessary death, but Souders should have received help long before he went to prison. Over the last two weeks, Souders' parents have received a barrage of calls from reporters and attorneys. Unfortunately, Timothy Joe Souders had to die before someone paid attention.
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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Video Shows Mentally Ill Prisoner's Slow Death
By Pat Shellenbarger The Grand Rapids Press October 11, 2006
KALAMAZOO -- All Timothy Joe Souders wanted was a shower.
Instead, the 21-year-old mentally ill inmate was locked in a segregation cell and shackled to a steel table. Four days later, on Aug. 6, the Adrian resident was dead, apparently because of extreme heat and dehydration, a doctor appointed by U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen concluded.
As a result, attorneys representing inmates in a lawsuit filed in the 1980s to improve prison medical care are asking Enslen to expand the case to include treatment for mentally ill prisoners.
During a hearing in Enslen's courtroom Wednesday, attorneys in the class-action suit played a video shot by Southern Michigan Correctional Facility guards and a surveillance camera showing Souders as he was led away in shackles to a segregation cell.
Video excerpts from the next four days showed his physical and mental decline, ending as personnel at the Jackson prison administered CPR in an attempt to revive him.
Souders' mother, Theresa Vaughn, sat in the front row and sobbed as she watched a courtroom television showing her son slowly dying.
Dr. Jerry Walden, an Ann Arbor physician called by the inmate's attorneys, testified a combination of the heat, lack of water and medications Souders was taking for bipolar disorder and numerous physical ailments, including high blood pressure and obesity, likely caused his death.
The state Department of Corrections had declared a heat emergency during the period Souders was shackled to the table. On the video, guards entering the cell can be seen wiping sweat from their faces and heard complaining of the heat.
During the four days Souders was shackled, he was not seen by a psychiatrist or other medical doctor.
"Tragically, there was not a psychiatrist on the staff at the time," Walden testified. "I think almost everybody dropped the ball, unfortunately."
Souders was not the only mentally ill inmate to die at Jackson in recent months. Without naming the inmates, Walden listed several others whose mental illnesses contributed to their deaths.
A schizophrenic inmate died Aug. 17 of congestive heart failure and liver failure, testified Dr. Robert Cohen, appointed by Enslen to monitor health care in the Jackson prisons.
Due to his mental illness, the inmate refused medical care, Cohen said. A request for a court order forcing him to undergo treatment was stalled in the Department of Corrections for five weeks.
"Instead, he died for lack of treatment," Cohen testified. "He needed help. Eventually, he died of a treatable illness, a very treatable illness. ...
"I find this chilling."
Most of the hearing, which continues through Friday, focused on Souders, who was serving time for resisting arrest, destroying police property and assault.
For an hour and 15 minutes Wednesday, courtroom spectators watched the video as guards entered the cell, shackled Souders to a table and periodically checked on him. As time passed, he became more agitated, cursed the guards and struggled with them. Repeatedly, he refused water.
Inmate Henry Franklin, who was locked in a nearby cell, testified he kicked on his cell door and hollered for guards to help Souders.
"They told me to shut up and mind my own business and stop kicking on the door," said Franklin, who is blind.
After he talked with attorneys in the case, Franklin said he was called before a disciplinary committee, locked in segregation and his medication for glaucoma and migraines withheld. After he was released from segregation, Franklin found his typewriter
