(6-6-16) Officials from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Health America, the NAACP, the ACLU, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law today called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24 year-old African American with a history of mental illness, who died last August in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Virginia.
Mitchell had been arrested for allegedly stealing $5 worth of snacks from a convenience store and was found dead in his feces covered cell 109 days later while waiting for transfer to a state mental hospital for evaluation. A medical examiner said he’d died from a heart attack caused by “wasting syndrome.” He had lost 40 to 50 pounds.
Mira Signer, the executive director of Virginia NAMI chapter, was a driving force behind the letter, which was signed by NAMI National’s CEO Mary Giliberti; Evelyn Steward, president of NAMI Hampton News; Bruce Cruser, executive director of Mental Health America of Virginia; Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, executive director of the ACLU in Virginia; Ira Burnim, legal director of the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and James P. Boyd, president of the Portsmouth branch of the NAACP.
In an Op Ed published in The Washington Post last month, I asked for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to investigate Mitchell’s death. In that editorial, which drew the ire of the Virginia Attorney General’s office, I complained about probes of Mitchell’s death released by the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDS) and the State Office of Inspector General. Both balked at actually investigating what transpired inside the jail, claiming they didn’t have jurisdiction to look there. So far, Hampton jail officials are the only ones who actually know what took place in the jail. Eight days after Mitchell’s body was found, they conducted an internal investigation and announced their employees had done nothing wrong. They have refused to make that report public. Jail officials also taped over video taken outside Mitchell’s cell that would have shown how often employee’s gave him food or entered his cell.
In their letter to the Justice Department, the authors wrote: “the ultimate question remains unknown: how did Mitchell starve to death before the jail staff’s and medical staff’s eyes?”
Mitchell was supposed to be checked by a nurse once a day and also eyeballed by correctional staff regularly, yet there is no mention in any jail or nursing reports that have been made public about his alarming loss of weight.
