HOYT JENKINS

JUDGE TO DECIDE MERITS OF JAIL DEATH LAWSUIT

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By David Simpson

June 14, 2007

After almost a year of investigation and legal argument, a federal judge will decide whether a jury should consider claims that DeKalb County jailers negligently —- or even deliberately —- caused the beating death of an elderly schizophrenic inmate by his young paranoid cellmate.

Based on court filings concluded Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. will decide whether to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Hoyt Jenkins.

The lawsuit alleges that guards at the DeKalb County Jail retaliated for Jenkins' troublemaking by putting him in a cell with a newly arrived young inmate who already had punched a fellow prisoner.

Jenkins was found dead July 7, 2004, in a cell he had shared overnight with Jason Corey Smith, a newly arrived inmate who had behaved strangely. Smith claimed self-defense and later was acquitted of murder by a DeKalb jury.

Jenkins' three sons contend that their frail 71-year-old father was well known in the jail for his racist rants —- including frequent use of the "n-word" —- and violent behavior. They say jail records show Smith, an African-American, was supposed to be in a different cell the night Jenkins was killed.

Officials for the county said cell assignments did not always strictly follow the computerized assignment system and no jail employee deliberately put Jenkins in harm's way.

Smith was a muscular 24-year-old who had behaved oddly since his arrest about 24 hours earlier on drug charges.

First, Smith demanded to be jailed, even giving Decatur police his marijuana to use against him. He said he feared unknown others wanted to kill him. But once at the jail, he tried to escape, and the lawsuit claims he also attacked an inmate in a holding area.

The following night, he was assigned to the jail's "special needs" area for prisoners under medical oversight. He was placed in Jenkins' cell. When guards arrived the next morning to serve breakfast, Jenkins was dead.

The lawsuit alleges:

- Detention officers "deliberately placed inmate/detainee Smith in a locked cell with Jenkins to retaliate against Jenkins, a psychologically imbalanced inmate whose verbal and racial outbursts they were sick of."

- The altercation between the men lasted 20 to 25 minutes, during which either Smith or Jenkins pressed the cell's call button to summon help. Nearby inmates also claimed they pressed their call buttons, but no officers responded. The county has said no jail officers knew Jenkins needed help.

- Jenkins had been alone in a two-person cell because he had at least three prior conflicts with other inmates, started when he pulled them off their bunks while they were asleep. A detention officer told investigators about those incidents and that Jenkins also "liked to make a lot of racial slurs. ... We tried to keep him by himself a lot of times because he normally had a lot of problems with cellmates," according to the lawsuit.

Another officer in the jail said he knew that one of the unofficial rules regarding Jenkins was that he should not have a cellmate, the lawsuit alleges.

News researchers Sharon Gaus and Joni Zeccola contributed to this article.

THE STORY SO FAR

- Sept. 25, 2003: Hoyt Jenkins is arrested for aggravated assault after waving a knife at two DeKalb County police officers who stopped him for driving without a license plate.

- March 3, 2004: A judge orders Jenkins transferred to Georgia Regional Hospital, citing a psychologist's opinion that Jenkins is "delusional" and "actively psychotic." State mental hospitals are overcrowded, and Jenkins is placed on a waiting list.

- July 5, 2004: Jason Corey Smith calls Decatur police and says he needs to be arrested because unnamed people want to kill him. He produces a bag of marijuana to ensure he will be taken to jail. Soon after arriving at the jail, however, he attempts to escape.

- July 6, 2004: Smith is placed in Jenkins' cell.

- July 7, 2004: Jenkins is found beaten to death in the cell. Smith is found sitting on a table in the cell, muttering and incoherent.

- Sept. 21, 2006: After a trial in which Smith claims self-defense and his lawyer blames jail officials for Jenkins' death, a DeKalb Superior Court jury finds Smith not guilty of all charges.

ROBERT E. RICHARDSON

RICHMOND COUNTY INMATE'S DEATH INVESTIGATED AS SUICIDE

Associated Press
Posted on Thu, Dec. 16, 2004

AUGUSTA, Ga. -Authorities are investigating the hanging death of a Richmond County jail inmate as a probable suicide.

Richmond County Deputy Coroner Charlena Graham identified the man as Robert E. Richardson, 38, of Belvedere, S.C., who was pronounced dead Wednesday morning.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab would conduct the autopsy, Graham said.

Richardson was found dead in his cell around 4:55 a.m. when deputies opened cell doors for the morning wake-up call, said Gary Nicholson, special agent in charge at the GBI's office in Thomson.

Richardson had stood on a sink, tied a sheet to a vent over the cell door and jumped off, hanging himself, Nicholson said. A bedsheet was found covering the bottom bunk of the cell, which blocked the view of Richardson's cellmate, Nicholson said.

Richmond County Sheriff Ronnie Strength and Nicholson said a suicide note was found, but neither would discuss what was written in it.

Richardson was arrested Dec. 11 on charges of speeding, driving under the influence of alcohol and driving without a license. Sheriff Strength and Agent Nicholson said Aiken County, S.C., authorities had an outstanding warrant against him for high and aggravated criminal domestic violence.

WILLIAM HARGROVE

HARRIETT WASHINGTON

RAY CHARLES AUSTIN

FREDERICK JEROME WILLIAMS

FOURTH WRONGFUL DEATH LAWSUIT HITS GWINNETTE

By ANDRIA SIMMONS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/25/07

The death of an inmate who fell ill while being held at the Gwinnett County Jail awaiting transfer to another jurisdiction has spurred a lawsuit against the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department and its contracted health care provider.

It is the fourth wrongful death lawsuit to be filed against the two parties within the past four years.

According to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, William Hargrove was suffering from abdominal pains on March 5, 2006, when a doctor ordered that he be sent to a hospital emergency room. However, a supervising deputy told medical staff not to send Hargrove to the hospital and instead attempted to transfer him to Newton County, the lawsuit states.

He died two hours later, before the transport had been arranged. An autopsy revealed the cause of death was a perforated ulcer of the small intestine.

Police had picked up Hargrove March 4 for failing to appear in court in Newton County on a speeding violation.

Representatives from both the Sheriff's Department and Prison Health Services declined comment. The lawsuit follows on the heels of another filed Sept. 7 in federal court on behalf of deceased inmate Harriett Washington. Washington died of leukemia on Oct. 17, 2005. Lawyers for Washington have criticized Prison Health Services staffers for repeatedly rebuffing her requests to be hospitalized during the days leading up to her death.

Both PHS and the Sheriff's Department also were named in two Taser- related wrongful death suits. Earlier this year, county officials agreed to pay the family of Ray Charles Austin $100,000 to dismiss a lawsuit arising from Austin's death during a 2003 scuffle with deputies. A lawsuit is still pending in the 2004 death of Frederick Jerome Williams at the jail.

JOSHUA HAZELTON

A HIDDEN SHAME: DANGER AND DEATH IN GEORGIA'S MENTAL HOSPITALS

A lonely end to a life of madness

Violent, delusional teen was supposed to be in a hospital but died in jail

By ALAN JUDD, ANDY MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/16/07

Joshua Hazelton wasn't supposed to be in jail.

Two psychologists had declared him mentally incompetent to stand trial for murder. Hazelton, 19, already had slit his wrist in his cell during a suicide attempt, and he rambled on about wild conspiracies and his own grand delusions.

He offered to plead guilty. "All the charges that have been set forth I am guilty of and would like to know if I could be given a sentence as soon as possible," he wrote to prosecutors in a delicate cursive on lined notebook paper. "I only ask that you are easy on me at this time."

First, though, a judge ordered the Georgia Department of Human Resources to immediately admit Hazelton to a state hospital for psychiatric treatment.

For emphasis, the judge underlined "immediately."

But almost three months later, still in the DeKalb County Jail with neither treatment nor a trial in sight, Hazelton died alone in his cell, a sheet tied around his forehead.

Hazelton's death illustrates the defects in Georgia's forensic mental health system, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The newspaper looked at the forensic system, which provides psychiatric treatment to criminal defendants, as part of a broader examination of the state's mental hospitals. Between 2002 and 2006, the Journal-Constitution determined, at least 115 state hospital patients died from neglect, abuse, poor medical care or under other suspicious circumstances.

Like other units of the state hospitals, the forensic wards struggle with a persistent problem: too many patients, not enough beds. At times during the past year and a half, as many as 150 Georgia defendants like Hazelton have spent months on end in jail waiting for treatment in a state hospital, their legal cases on indefinite hold.

State officials say they are trying to ease crowding in the forensic system. Eighty-three new beds for forensic patients should be available by October, reducing the waiting list to less than 50, said Kenya Bello, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Human Resources, which operates the state hospitals.

In addition, Bello said, a state law that took effect in July should relieve pressure on the hospitals. In the past, all defendants found incompetent to stand trial had to be treated in a state hospital. Under the new law, some may receive outpatient treatment instead.

Hazelton's death followed more than a year of disregard across the criminal justice system. Over the course of seven arrests, Hazelton graduated from petty offenses to increasingly serious crimes. Yet no one — police, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, Hazelton's family — appears to have sought psychiatric treatment for the troubled teenager with a tattoo of a teardrop beneath his left eye.

His first psychological evaluations came only after he allegedly killed a roommate and then led police on a violent chase. Both psychologists who examined Hazelton — one hired by his lawyers, the other working for the state — said he needed psychiatric treatment.

As with many other mentally ill defendants, though, help continued to elude him.

"He was just another one," said Lawrence Schneider, the DeKalb County public defender, whose office represented Hazelton. "There are a lot of Hazeltons, lots of them. He didn't stand out from the mass of people in that situation. Until he killed somebody – and then, not that much." 'A POWDER KEG' A commission studying mental health care in Georgia concluded that county jails had become de facto psychiatric facilities, indefinitely holding people with mental illness while they waited for hospital beds.

That was in 1916.

Nine decades later, the same conclusion holds true.

Jails across the state hold what sheriffs describe as a disproportionate number of prisoners who are mentally ill. Often, sheriffs say, those prisoners have committed minor crimes but need psychiatric care rather than incarceration.

Before the recent expansions, the seven state hospitals devoted about one-third of their beds — 387 — to their forensic units. Those units concentrate on evaluating mentally ill criminals and getting them competent to stand trial. They also house defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Since January 2006, according to state records, the forensic units have not operated below 100 percent capacity even one month. The waiting list for a forensic bed, records show, grew from 18 in January 2006 to 73 in January this year before reaching a high of 154 this July.

Hospital mismanagement apparently contributed to the list's expansion. At West Central Georgia Regional Hospital in Columbus, for example, a recent audit found that forensic evaluations were not performed promptly and that some forensic patients were held longer than necessary.

"This clogs the system and contributes to the need to expand the number of forensic beds," auditors wrote.

With forensic beds so scarce, Georgia jails have replaced psychiatric institutions as the last resort for many people with mental illnesses.

Georgia counties spend several million dollars a year on psychotropic drugs for prisoners with mental illness, the Georgia Sheriffs' Association says. Those expenses, the sheriffs say, cut into local law enforcement budgets.

But if the jails don't hold mentally ill prisoners, "they're going to hurt themselves, their families, or another citizen," said Sheriff Mike Jolley of Harris County. "It's a powder keg."

FOR TROUBLED TEEN, NO HELP

Joshua Hazelton began having psychiatric problems by age 12. That year, his mother later told a psychologist who evaluated him, Hazelton killed a neighbor's cat, claiming he had heard voices telling him to do so.

Hazelton, the next-to-youngest of four children, was born in Charleston, S.C. His parents separated when he was 3, and his mother brought him to DeKalb County in his early teens. He completed the eighth grade, records show, but got kicked out of Cross Keys High School in the ninth grade for fighting.

Then, beginning in December 2004, shortly after his 17th birthday, Hazelton's troubles escalated.

Police arrested him for driving a stolen car. Two days after he posted bond, officers arrested him again, this time for criminal trespassing and obstruction. More charges followed: carrying a concealed weapon, receiving stolen property, aggravated assault.

Between Dec. 30, 2004, and Dec. 18, 2005, Hazelton spent 82 days in the DeKalb County Jail.

Despite his increasingly serious charges and his history of psychiatric problems, no one tried to get Hazelton into a state hospital. Instead, Hazelton followed what Robert Storms, an assistant public defender in DeKalb County, called "a fairly typical progression."

Defense lawyers rarely request psychiatric evaluations of their clients "unless someone is obviously crazy," Storms said. "There was nothing about Hazelton that stood out."

In January 2006, out of jail on $500 bond after his sixth arrest, Hazelton was living with four other people at an extended-stay motel on Shallowford Road.

Crime scene photographs would later document Room 204's dissolute environment: Liquor bottles on nearly every flat surface. Dirty clothes piled in corners. Dirty dishes stacked in the kitchenette. Pornographic pictures tossed on the bed and tacked to the bedroom wall.

Hazelton and his roommates stayed up all night Jan. 18 smoking cocaine, according to police and court records. Hazelton had a gun, a Colt Python .357 Magnum, which he repeatedly trained on 22-year-old Norman Wayne Walton and demanded that they have sex. The other three roommates eventually left the apartment.

Just before 6 a.m., Hazelton peeled out of the parking lot in a borrowed car, according to police reports. One of the roommates found Walton a few minutes later, face down on the bedroom floor, dead from five gunshot wounds.

About two hours later, Hazelton was driving east on I-20 in Walton County, 50 miles from Atlanta. As a tractor-trailer pulled alongside him, Hazelton pointed the .357 Magnum out the window and, without provocation, fired a shot into the truck's right front tire, according to police reports. Troopers from the Georgia State Patrol spotted his car and gave chase.

Hazelton pushed the 1999 Daewoo Leganza to 130 mph, troopers said, and crossed the median into the oncoming lanes. At Thomson, in McDuffie County, he pulled off the interstate and headed toward the small town, still going 100 mph on the two-lane road.

"He traveled around a blind left-hand curve completely in the left lane," a trooper later wrote in a report on the pursuit. "He had no regard for any person traveling in the opposite direction. I thought about my family traveling along without any knowledge that he was on the roads. It was very fortunate that there was no traffic there at that moment. Once, he aimed directly at an oncoming vehicle, forcing it to the far shoulder and swerving away at the last moment."

With Hazelton fast approaching the town, a Thomson police officer tried to block the road with his car. Hazelton slammed head-on into the cruiser, jumped out of his car and ran. The officer was not seriously injured.

Two officers tackled Hazelton behind a pawnshop, just after he tossed his gun into a pond.

Police took him, yet again, to the DeKalb County Jail.

'WORSE NOW THAN EVER'

Nearly a year and a half earlier, state officials had made a promise to defense lawyers, said Schneider, the DeKalb County public defender: No more prisoners would have to wait indefinitely for psychiatric treatment at a state hospital.

This pledge followed the death of 71-year-old Hoyt Davie Jenkins in the DeKalb jail. Jenkins, who had schizophrenia, had been charged with aggravated assault after threatening two police officers with a knife. A judge ruled Jenkins was not competent to stand trial and ordered that he receive treatment at Georgia Regional Hospital/ Atlanta, the state psychiatric facility on Panthersville Road in south DeKalb.

Four months later, Jenkins remained on the waiting list and in the jail.

His continual racist remarks had alienated guards and other prisoners alike. Even Storms, the assistant public defender, describes Jenkins as "psychotic, racist and mean."

On July 6, 2004, jailers placed another prisoner in Jenkins' cell: a 24-year-old African-American man who had been charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession. The next day, authorities said, the cellmate beat Jenkins to death. A jury later acquitted the man, saying he had killed the much older and frailer Jenkins in self-defense. Jenkins' family is suing DeKalb County in federal court, claiming jailers orchestrated the beating. In court papers, lawyers for the sheriff's office denied the allegation.

Jenkins' death prompted defense lawyers, especially in DeKalb and Fulton counties, to start asking judges to hold the state hospitals in contempt of court if they didn't immediately admit forensic patients. Some judges in both counties complied.

When the hospitals face contempt citations, "they'll come and pick the person up in a matter of days," said Vernon Pitts, Fulton County's public defender. "But it will push other people back."

Pitts' office recently represented a woman whose trial on an assault charge was delayed so she could get treatment in a state hospital. But she spent six months in the Fulton County Jail waiting for a forensic bed. If she could have just pleaded guilty, defense lawyers said, she probably would have spent less time behind bars.

"It's worse now than ever before," Pitts said.

The forensic units' waiting list receives "bursts of attention," Schneider said. "Everybody relaxes until somebody dies and the media get involved."

Getting into a forensic unit, however, does not guarantee comprehensive treatment. The units focus primarily on making patients competent to stand trial, not on correcting their sometimes-violent tendencies.

Dr. Donald Manning, the medical director at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, warned his supervisor of the breadth of this problem in March. "We have 27 patients in forensics charged with sex offenses, and another 14 who have exhibited inappropriate sexual behavior since their admission," Manning wrote in an e-mail. "We provide them no treatment for their sexual conduct disorders. Since we can't pursue treatment off-site, the alternative is provide no treatment and end up with civil rights issues, and worse, to have a high-visibility incident involving a patient or former patient we did not treat.

"This makes me nervous."

A MYSTERIOUS DEATH Joshua Hazelton languished in jail.

Prosecutors didn't seek an indictment from a grand jury until April 20, 2006, three months after Norman Walton's killing. Two more months passed before the public defender's office sent a psychologist to evaluate Hazelton. It was another seven weeks before Hazelton's lawyer notified the court he would pursue an insanity defense. And then it took almost two more months for the second psychologist's evaluation.

Hazelton told the psychologists he had written every popular rap song since 2001. He said jailers were stealing his DNA because it contained a cure for AIDS. He claimed a drug-trafficking gang had conspired with authorities to put him in jail.

Finally, on Oct. 25, 2006, 10 months after the killing, DeKalb Superior Court Judge Mark Anthony Scott ruled Hazelton mentally incompetent to stand trial.

"It is hereby ordered ... that custody of the defendant be immediately transferred from the sheriff of DeKalb County to the Georgia Department of Human Resources at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta," Scott wrote.

The public defender's office faxed the order to Georgia Regional.

Nothing happened.

Hazelton remained in jail in a solitary cell.

A doctor at the jail had given him antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs after a suicide attempt in March. But by October he was taking no medication, records show, despite what his jail medical records described as "multiple psychotic episodes."

Early on Jan. 9, Hazelton appeared to be sleeping when a jailer brought breakfast to his cell. When the jailer returned about 10:30 a.m., Hazelton was lying on his back, seemingly unconscious. The jail's medical staff could not revive him.

Investigators said they found no evidence either that Hazelton killed himself or that he was murdered. However, according to a medical examiner's report, a white sheet that was tied around Hazelton's head easily could have slipped around his neck.

An autopsy failed to identify the cause of Hazelton's death. For no reason that the medical examiner could determine, his heart simply stopped beating.

The next day, the public defender's office received a letter from the DeKalb jail.

Dated Dec. 26, the letter displayed the same careful handwriting its author had used in his earlier correspondence with prosecutors. He complained he had been in jail almost a year, but still had not been sentenced. He wondered what was coming next.

"How long does this take?" he wrote. "Will I be going home soon?"

He concluded on a hopeful note:

"Being I've been sitting for so long something must have been taking place that's good for me. Let me know what it is.

"Respectfully, Joshua Hazelton."

CARLOS RODRIGUEZ

SHERIFF DEPUTY WAS INVOLVED IN PREVIOUS TASER DEATH

By LATEEF MUNGIN , GEORGE CHIDI
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/26/07

A Gwinnett County sheriff's deputy involved in the Taser-related death of a Norcross man Wednesday also was involved in a controversial 2004 Taser-related death of a jail inmate.

Officials with the Gwinnett County Sheriff Department identified John Irvine and Nicholas Higgins as the deputies who were involved in the arrest Wednesday of 27-year-old Carlos Rodriguez.

Irvine and Higgins were at an apartment complex in Norcross when Rodriguez started fighting with them, authorities said. During the fight, one or both of the deputies shocked Rodriguez with a Taser. He died later.

The sheriff's department said Rodriguez was drunk and resisting arrest. They declined to say how many times Rodriguez was stunned or comment in more detail until it received autopsy results.

One of the deputies involved, Irvine, was also involved in a scuffle in the Gwinnett jail that ended in the death of an inmate Frederick Williams, according to records of an internal investigation that the Journal-Constitution obtained after the incident. Williams died in May 2004 after sheriff's deputies used a Taser on him repeatedly. Williams had handcuffs on his wrists and ankles at the time.

Irvine did not use the Taser against Williams, records show, but a videotape shows him helping deputies try to hold Williams down as another deputy shocks him with the stun gun.

Meanwhile, a preliminary autopsy on Carlos Rodriguez may be finished today, but toxicology results may take weeks, said Stacey Bourbonnais, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's department.

The department plans to discuss the case more freely after it receives the autopsy results, she said.

Rodriguez's brother told a local TV station that Rodriguez was in handcuffs when a deputy used a Taser on him, but Bourbonnais said that is not true.

"I can only say that what the brother said on TV is not consistent with statements made by other witnesses," Bourbonnais said.

Rodriguez appeared to be heavily intoxicated when deputies arrived at the Las Colinas complex on Lia Hills Drive near Brook Hollow Parkway, Bourbonnais said.

One of Rodriguez 's friends tried to keep him from fighting by placing him in a choke hold, she said. The man was transported to Gwinnett Medical Center, where he later died.

Gwinnett sheriff's investigators and the Sheriff's Professional Standards Unit are investigating the incident.

Irvine and Higgins are on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation, as is standard department policy. Rodriguez, 27, is the third person in Gwinnett to die after being shocked with a Taser. Authorities used a Taser on Williams in 2004 and on Ray Austin in the Gwinnett County Jail in September 2003. Both lost consciousness and later died.

On-site management for Las Colinas referred inquires to their corporate office. Rodriguez wasn't a tenant at the apartment complex, said Tom King, a risk manager for apartment management company, Westdale Asset Management. Apartment managers didn't know who Rodriguez was until news reports identified him, he said. King declined further comment.

J. HAROLD COCKRELL

INMATE'S DEATH BELIEVED A SUICIDE

1/28/04
© 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CLAYTON COUNTY
The Clayton County Sheriff's Department believes an inmate found dead in his cell Sunday morning committed suicide.

J. Harold Cockrell, 39, of Griffin was found by deputies at Jonesboro's Harold R. Banke Justice Center. His roommate was asleep and knew nothing about what happened, authorities said.

Cockrell had been jailed since Jan. 23 after Spalding County authorities arrested him on an outstanding warrant for a theft by taking charge in Clayton.

He is the third inmate since 2002 to die in a Clayton jail.

Authorities think Kassandra Kimbrell, 33, died in February 2003 in a jail infirmary of complications of a tubal pregnancy.

And Northur Monquez Burks, 19, committed suicide by using a bedsheet to hang himself, authorities said.

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