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22 months in solitary - no formal charges

C

connorbug

Council Member
Neglected prisoner gets $15.5 million after serving 22 months in solitary | The Lookout - Yahoo! News

Kind've like a modern Kafkaesque nightmare except here, the state basically latched onto somebody and instead of bureacratic procedure doing him in, the bureacratic procedure never actually happened and he just rotted in jail.

"Slevin was never brought before a judge nor was he officially convicted of any crime."

Of course now the state is held financially liable.

So? Who got fired? (NOBODY)
 
Stephen Slevin spent 22 months in solitary confinement in a New Mexico jail. During that time, his mental health deteriorated, fungus grew on his skin, and he was forced to pull his own tooth after being denied access to a dentist. A recent settlement with Dona Ana County resulted in Slevin receiving $15.5 million.
Click to expand...

WTF? Has the US gone absolutely BONKERS?

I wish this guy all the good will in the world and hope his tormentors get what they so richly deserve.
 
you raise the most important question, of course.

taxpayers got stung for $15 million, but the public officials who were derelect in their duty (or corrupt?) get zero punishment. want to bet that those responsible pull down huge salaries compared to you and me, and have gold plated retirement packages?
 
I'm trying to figure out how the hell this could happen. And, I doubt it has anything with anyone being evil, lazy, or corrupt.

First of all, I think we have to assume that he seemed a little off his rocker to begin with. And, it sounds more like this poor fella probably lapsed into apparent full-on-lunacy, in very short order, such that no one made the connection that he was once "sane", and then he wasn't. So...for all anyone knew, he was ALWAYS some sort of crazy old bearded dude, that no one knew what to do with.

OF COURSE...none of this suggests and excuse in the least. I'm just trying to guess as to how this could happen.
 
Unfreaking believable. Whoever left that poor man to rot there should spend some time in solitary.
 
I agree fairsheet. Nothing excuses it but I would like to be able to connect to the dots and see where the breakdown was. I can guess that he was just there and your average guard would not know why he was there and day after day figure it was someone else's reponsibiltiy to tell them when this guy gets moved, etc. But, who the heck is in charge of making sure they know who is in jail and for how long.

It sounds like he had no one on the outside even looking for or advocating for him. I can't imagine if someone cared about this poor guy in the inside they wouldn't have tried to get a lawyer, etc for him. You wonder how good this friend was who lent him his car... i mean... if my friend was in jail, I wouldn't just go... "oh well... I got my car back.. wonder what happened to that dude."
 
connieb said:
I agree fairsheet. Nothing excuses it but I would like to be able to connect to the dots and see where the breakdown was. I can guess that he was just there and your average guard would not know why he was there and day after day figure it was someone else's reponsibiltiy to tell them when this guy gets moved, etc. But, who the heck is in charge of making sure they know who is in jail and for how long.

It sounds like he had no one on the outside even looking for or advocating for him. I can't imagine if someone cared about this poor guy in the inside they wouldn't have tried to get a lawyer, etc for him. You wonder how good this friend was who lent him his car... i mean... if my friend was in jail, I wouldn't just go... "oh well... I got my car back.. wonder what happened to that dude."
Click to expand...

VERY good point....he must've had no one advocating for him. Americans shouldn't NEED someone advocating for them, as they might in a Mexican, Pakistani, or Burmese jail. But...that does give us a starting point, anyway.
 
I have a few friends and family who have had brushes with the law. And, sadly, without someone trying to get things squared away for them from the outside, they would have been locked up far longer than necessary. For instance, I have a friend who was given 30 days jail for a DUI, and 3 months house arrest with work release. Here is the crazy thing - you have to have the house arrest coordinated with the monitoring company before they would release you from jail. Except - guess what you can't do from jail - coordinate with the monitoring company. He ended up spending an additional 10 days locked up ( which did NOT come off his 3 months house arrest btw) because there needed to be all sorts of things corrdinated at his home. For instance, they needed to have a land line. Well, like many people - they had given up their landline in favor of cell phones. So, they needed to have the phone company set up a new landline which took weeks, etc. If he didn't have a wife who very much wanted him out of jail and back home - he would still be in there.

connie
 
Of course all that red tape serves a profitable purpose for jails that charge both the prisoners and (in the case of private prisons) the government by the day.
 
Agreed. They charge pretty hefty fees to coordinate things like work release and home detention. They charge fees to load the inmate's account so he can buy things like toothbrushes from the commissary. Which of course they have to buy from the commissary because they aren't allowed to be brought in from outside. Then the commissary charges 3 - 4 times what it would retail for, etc.

connie
 
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