PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This piece truly belongs in our "Read this and Weep" department. As reporter Sarah Smith tells us: "Tyler’s defense lawyer, appointed by the court, informed the judge in a court filing that his attempts at speaking with the boy had made it apparent the 17-year-old did not have “sufficient mental capacity” to understand the charge he was facing. The lawyer wanted Tyler to undergo a psychiatric examination. He listed the many reasons why that was appropriate: During his childhood, Tyler had been found to be suffering from seven different mental disorders, the first diagnosis coming when he was just four years old; he had threatened to bomb his school; he had chased his two siblings with a knife trying to stab them; his family suspected that he’d strangled a cat to death with his bare hands; he’d been hospitalized on several occasions and later placed in a home for troubled boys. The local prosecutor joined the defense lawyer’s request for an evaluation, and Judge John A. Gregory immediately signed an order to have Tyler assessed at the state hospital in Whitfield to determine if Tyler had a factual and rational understanding of the legal proceeding against him, as well as whether, at the time of the non-fatal assault, he knew the “difference between right and wrong.” “It is therefore ordered and adjudged,” Gregory wrote on April 23, 2013, “that the defendant Tyler Douglas Haire be given a mental evaluation at the earliest possible date.” Tyler’s evaluation would not happen for three and a half years."..."Sarah Smith was a reporting fellow at ProPublica. She previously interned at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she wrote about police misconduct. A story she co-authored on allegations of police abusing arrestees in the back of vans contributed to a victim getting a payout from the city and the police review of transport policies. She recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where she spent most of her time at the school paper. One of her stories at Penn involved a whistleblower from the school's mental health center leaking 11 years of internal documents that showed inadequacies in how the center treated students with mental illness. She's also been a fellow at The Atlantic, National Journal and Politico."
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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STORY: ‘What Are We Going to Do About Tyler?’ by reporter Sarah Smith, published by ProPublica on December 28, 2017.
GIST: This is a story that cannot be summarized or reduced to a precis. It deserves to be read word by word. But a few words will explain why I found Tyler's story so compelling - and why I think reporter Sarah Smith and ProPublica deserves Kudos for telling it..." Louis Masur, the psychologist who had evaluated Tyler, said he couldn’t discuss the specifics of Tyler’s case. But he once more made clear the problems at play as Mississippi struggles to deal with its long list of prisoners awaiting evaluations. The long lapses in time complicate determining whether someone was sane at the time of a crime. And while he can offer the court some information about a prisoner, he said he’s really in no position to offer definitive determinations. “It’s almost impossible to do,” he said.
Judge Andy Howorth, the senior judge in Calhoun County, said cases like Tyler’s haunt him. What happens to someone who’s competent but mentally ill? What happens to someone who’s incompetent but dangerous and handed to an underfunded system for the mentally ill? Mostly, they wind up behind bars. “Of course,” Howorth said, “I worry that this is what I’m participating in — the warehousing of the mentally ill.” ProPublica made the first of repeated requests to interview officials at Whitfield last summer. That and each subsequent request were rejected. Instead, Whitfield provided a statement through a public relations official declining to comment on Tyler’s case due to privacy restrictions. The statement acknowledged evaluation delays due to issues getting case information and the lack of bed space but pointed to initiatives the hospital has taken to improve its situation, such as new jail-based competency restoration program in one of the regional mental health centers.
When he retires, Calhoun County Sheriff Greg Pollan said, he aims to sit down and write his autobiography. Tyler will be a full chapter. No psychologist or psychiatrist in the country, he said, will ever convince him Tyler doesn’t have profound mental problems. The sheriff wishes Tyler had been committed to Whitfield for treatment for at least some time. He doesn’t think things will end well once Tyler is walking the streets again. “I just felt like everybody in the world let him down somewhere,” Pollan said. “Mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, the school system, Alabama, Mississippi let him down. And, I guess, me, to a certain degree. “Or I would have figured out a way quicker to get him out of here than four years. I wish I’d have been smarter and could have figured out a way sooner to help.” HL.
The entire story can be read at the link below:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
