(8-9-16) Hours after the Virginia Governor’s office announced yesterday that it had cleared state Inspector general June W. Jennings in a whistle-blower complaint, new questions surfaced about her office’s investigation into the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24-year-old African American diagnosed with schizophrenia who died in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail last August waiting to be sent to Eastern State Hospital.

Travis Fain, a reporter at The Daily Press in Hampton Roads, reported that Jennings’ husband, William D. Jennings, is a manager at Eastern State Hospital, and Priscilla Smith, who oversaw the State Office of Inspector General probe into Mitchell’s death, had previously worked there as a senior manager.

Mitchell spent 101 days in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail waiting to be transferred to the hospital in Williamsburg. After his death, it was revealed that paperwork sent to hospital requesting that Mitchell be transferred there had been tossed into a drawer by a hospital employee and forgotten until after his body was discovered.

Although neither Jennings’ husband nor OSIG Supervisor Smith were directly involved in the hospital’s mishandling of Mitchell’s transfer request, Priscilla Smith’s supervision of the Mitchell investigation placed her in a position where she was investigating her past employer (Eastern State Hospital ) where the husband of her boss (June Jennings) is currently employed.

Reporter Fain wrote:

Requests for (interviews with) Priscilla Smith and June Jennings, made through the inspector general’s press office, were not granted, but spokeswoman Julie Grimes emailed a statement, saying William Jennings has been a career state employee and that his employment at Eastern State “does not represent any conflict of interest.”

G. Douglas Bevelacqua, a former inspector general for behavioral health, who has been critical of the office’s handling of the Mitchell case, disagreed in an email to me.

The fact June Jennings’s husband was the Director of Quality Management at Eastern State Hospital during the OSIG’s investigation of Jamycheal Mitchell’s death is a clear conflict of interest. Also, the fact that Pricilla Smith was his predecessor in that position at Eastern State Hospital until a few months before the system failed and Mitchell starved to death in jail because of “clerical errors” is another clear conflict of interest.

Questions about possible conflicts of interest are the latest in a barrage of troubling revelations swirling around Mitchell’s death. Click to continue…

(7-5-16  A second prisoner with mental illness dies after being held on a minor charge in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, which already is being sued for negligence in another troubling death. When two investigative reporters learn about this second incident, state officials stonewall, hiding behind HIPAA which they claim prevents them from releasing any information. Meanwhile, the Office of the State Inspector General and the disAbility Law Center of Virginia, which have the authority to investigate inmates deaths, stay mute.

Thankfully, Richmond Times Dispatch Reporters K. Burnell Evans and Sarah Kleiner, who have been doggedly investigating Virginia’s mental health care system, set out to learn the identity and background of this anonymous prisoner. 

Had it not been for them, it is doubtful that anyone would have bothered to learn any information about the deceased.  Their story reveals how easily it is for individuals with mental illnesses to be marginalized in Virginia. It also raises additional questions about the leadership in state agencies that are responsible for caring for Virginians with mental illnesses. 

State fails to notify family after woman dies at Central State Hospital

BY K. BURNELL EVANS AND SARAH KLEINER

Richmond Times-Dispatch July 2, 1916

DINWIDDIE, Valerie Anderson was buried as she died — quietly and alone, in the care of Central State Hospital workers.

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(6-20-16) Here’s a quiz.

Choose what you would expect an agency — created to protect persons living with disabilities — to do when a Virginian with schizophrenia gets arrested for taking $5 of snack foods without paying, is jailed for 101 days, and found dead in a feces covered cell from a heart attack caused by starvation?

(A.) Investigate the death and conditions in the jail to determine why that inmate lost 40 -50 pounds while supposedly being checked daily by a nurse.

(B.) Join the ACLU, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, NAACP, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Virginia Chapter of Mental Health America, and the Washington Post in asking for a federal investigation.

(C.) Hold a press conference to denounce the death and file a lawsuit under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act against the jail and state.

(D.) Write a letter of complaint to the governor.  

If you answered (D.), you have correctly answered what the Richmond-based disAbility Law Center of Virginia, an organization that contracts with the federal government to act as legal advocates for Virginians with disabilities, has done in the tragic case of Jamycheal Mitchell, the 24 year-old, African American inmate who was found dead last August in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth.

A letter.

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(6-10-16) The top editorial in today’s Washington Post. Thank you!)

In a Virginia jail, a young man wasted away and died — and no one bothered to notice

By Editorial Board June 10 at 7:37 AM The Washington Post 

A MENTALLY ill black man, just 24 years old, is arrested in April 2015 for shoplifting a Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake — total cost: $5 — from a convenience store in Virginia. He languishes in jail for 14 weeks, refusing medicine, his weight plummeting, his cell smeared with feces. After 101 days, having lost more than 40 pounds — literally wasting away, as a starving man does — he dies.

And no one noticed a thing, until it was too late.

Those are some of the essential facts surrounding the case of Jamycheal Mitchell, whose death last summer triggered at least three official investigations and not one coherent answer to the central question: Why didn’t anyone intervene?

The first and hastiest investigation was done by the facility where Mitchell starved to death, the Hampton Roads Regional Jail. Scarcely a week after his body was discovered, jail officials concluded their probe, pronounced themselves blameless — and released not an iota of information.

The next two investigations, by Virginia’s Office of the State Inspector General and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, were no more edifying. The inspector general, citing guidance from the state attorney general, said it lacked jurisdiction to question jail personnel, thereby raising doubts about the utility of its existence. And the DBHDS, in thousands of turgid words, did not bother to address or, so far as can be determined, even ask about the most glaring failure of all: How could no one have noticed that a man was wasting away in plain sight?

This is not an investigation. This is a whitewash.

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(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.

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(5-30-16) If you wish to know why parents of adult children with mental illnesses are frustrated by today’s failing mental health system, listen to Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds’ powerful and eloquent keynote speech that begins at 3:05:05 on the video posted above. (Don’t worry, it is only a few minutes long.)

Senator Deeds’ observations about the problems he encountered because of federal HIPAA laws, mirror comments that I receive each week from bewildered parents.

Deeds was the featured speaker at a U.S. Senate Summit on Mental Health held by Senators Bill Cassidy (R. La.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) last week to whip up support for their bipartisan bill, the Mental Health Reform Act, which is making its way through the Senate. Both are hopeful that some version of it could be sent to the White House this summer to be signed into law.

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