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Barton Ray Gaines' Story January 2, 2003
To Whom It may Concern:
The following is a plea for Justice from a nation that spends approximately $3,000 annually to educate a child and $30,000 to keep one locked in a prison cell because our dedicated elected legislators, brilliant educators and valiant law enforcement have failed them miserably. We were denied help from these institutions when we needed it the most. The sad fact is that the mental-health care in the Texas prison system is shortsighted, wasteful and dismal. Very little has been done to see that these very fragile and complex individuals receive treatment in a humane manner. A teenager who assaults someone and winds up with a 35-year sentence, enters the Texas prison system and has problems coping, ends up in a windowless cell and refuses his meds because he's paranoid and does most of his years in isolation. He gets out of prison and comes back to live in the community. Is the public safer? Or would it have been better to provide that man treatment while he was in prison? Prison is a very hard place to be for anybody, but if you have a mental illness, it's a very dangerous and damaging place if there is no protection of prisoners against predatory practices by other prisoners. When an inmate enters prison with a verifiable diagnosis of mental illness, challenges arise that can prove daunting because it is not an environment conducive to mental health. As external reality recedes, their mental functioning often deteriorates. In the absence of mental health treatment, seriously mentally ill inmates become the `bottom dwellers' of the prison system, trapped in segregation units by their illness and unable to adapt to the hard conditions found at the deep end of the correctional system and suffer in their madness, alone and neglected. People who come out of this system are infinitely worse than when they went in. "You tell me what makes more sense? What's happening in Texas is not good for the public and it's not good for the inmates who are mentally ill." Texans have allowed the spirit of vengeance such unrivaled sway in our dealings with those who commit crime that we have ceased to consider properly whether we have taken adequate account of the role that mental impairment may play in the determination of moral responsibility. Texas holds one in every nine U.S. inmates and is the world’s largest prison system. Our most precious resource,
our children are being destroyed with street drugs. Police do not prevent
crime, early intervention does. All crimes began and end with illicit drugs.
Do any of our politicians wonder why there are so many prisons and so few
schools? Is there no one that can see what is happening or do you care?
Barton Ray Gaines, Jr. is a 19 year old boy with an IQ of 84. He has four of the five types of Dyslexia, ADD/ADHA, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) anxiety disorder and manic depression. Imagine living for just one day managing your life with Bart’s disabilities. Anyone with an Attention Deficit Disorder will know what a frustrating and depressing condition it is. Children with ADD are a high risk for chemical dependency. These disorder is bad enough without the stigma of knowing you must take drugs just to be normal. Even though his mother took him to private doctors on many occasions, he was never diagnosed or medicated properly. "The percentage (16%) of the criminal population that suffers from severe mental disease in Texas Prisons is staggering. The vast majority do not receive and are not receiving the quality of mental health care. The historic, 30-year Ruiz prison reform case to stop "cruel and unusual punishment" in Texas penitentiaries has ended, meaning the state will have greater breathing room to carry out an agreed upon corrective action plan, to be monitored by the U.S. Justice Department. His mother pleaded with the Crowley School System to put him in Special Ed classes, but they refused to admit he could not do the work. These types of student reflected badly on the school reputation and state rating. The teachers humiliated Bart and he was made to feel so worthless he finally did the taxpayers a favor and dropped out in the 9th grade. His self-esteem started to slide and he abused drugs as a means to self-medicate. Bart’s whole life has been a struggle to learn things as basic as the ABC‘s. He is a little slow! He has a hard time “getting it.” He started hanging out with other dropouts, experimenting with drugs. Believing his teachers unrestrained opinion of him he found a place where he felt accepted. He became sullen and belligerent with his mother. He seemed filled with anger and refused to obey his mother. His behavior was aggressive and he began to imitate the conduct of his drug using friends. Bart had very serious problems, but he wouldn’t admit it to his mother or himself. His father was killed tragically when he was two years old. The only male role model in his life, his maternal grandfather, who, after 35-years of police service was arrested for child molestation when Bart was 14. He learned about the arrest on television while in the company of his friends. That destroyed his faith in “To Serve and Protect.” Both of his Paternal grandparents committed suicide. His mother sought help, over a four year period, from many institutions that are supported by our tax dollar, only to threatened and blamed for her sons conduct. Bart Could not hold a job for more than a few weeks before being fired. His family knew he needed help from a professional. We knew something was very wrong with his thought processes. Bart just didn’t seem to realize there would be consequences to his actions, but none of us knew what to do to help him. The TRC (Texas Rehabilitation Commission) agreed to assess Bart in December of 2001. The TRC psychologist diagnosed him with the many learning disabilities mentioned above. He was sent to the TRC Psychiatrist and without looking at any of the test results from the other TRC doctors, this doctor prescribed for Bart the popular SSRI wonder drug, Paxil, which caused brain dysfunction. At first we believed that we had found the help he needed. He found employment he was good at and actually enjoyed. He stayed at home more and stopped abusing street drugs. He seemed more focused and calm. He showed respect for his mother, kept his room clean, was never absent or late for work. Later we learned, this drug should never be given to young males diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Within a few weeks of taking this medication, Bart had a full blown manic episode that resulted in his arrest. He yielded to his ever present peer pressure and met up with his drug using friends and a drug deal gone bad left the two boys trying to sell them drugs beaten and shot. The wounds were not serious. The two drug pushers were treated and released. We are all very fortunate that they recovered completely. All ten of the teenagers involved in the setup and failed purchase of this drug deal were Crowley students or Crowley dropouts. They used Bart because he had a new pickup and a job but they laughed at him called him names like “retard” when his back was turned. When Bart self-destructed and the drug deal that was initially set up by his peers went wrong most of his little drug using buddies pointed at him as the instigator. He was arrested, charged with two counts of attempted capitol murder and sentenced to two concurrent terms of 35 years. The state made it legal for Wal-Mart to sell both the gun and the ammunition to these teenage children. The beer they were drinking was illegally purchased from a convenience store. Bart’s family paid almost $50,000.00 for his defense but his attorney never once asked him what happened. He knew he was incompetent to stand trial, but he told the family that the public was sick of hearing about mental incompetence and he did not feel comfortable riding into court on the “wrong medication for ADHD” horse. He advised us to plead guilty and leave Bart to the mercy of the jury because the general public does not understand mental illness nor do juries, and the legal definition for insanity is so much more narrow than the medical that it is difficult to ever get an insanity ruling. He told us he didn’t dare put Bart on the witness stand because he could not predict how he would behave or what he might say. He told Bart he would have to plead guilty. During the trial Bart’s attorney told us “ After court recesses for the day I always wonder what room Bart has been sitting in while his case is being heard.” Bart had no prior criminal history but the harsh truth is that the jury had no compassion because they were not given any of the facts about his history or the events leading up to this crime. Bart’s attorney made too many trade-offs with the D.A. We learned, at Bart’s expense, that the System is not about Guilt or Justice, it is about win or loose. It is a mind game played out in court between attorneys. “I won’t put this information out if you promise not to question this witness.” Or “we’ll drop our charges to Aggravated Robbery if you’ll plead guilty.” Until very few of the facts and none of the contributing factors was heard by the jury. How can a modern, civilized society choose to incarcerate their mentally ill citizens rather than treat them? This case in now in the Appellate Court, but the wheels of justice there grind very slowly, while a young man with numerous mental disabilities is lock in a very dangerous world he can not understand and every day is a struggle to survive. He has a very loving and supportive family. Is it too much for us to expect Bart to get medical help instead of locking him up for 35 years. We, Bart’s family, are respectfully requesting that you take a look at this tragedy and the thousands of other mentally challenged young people locked in prisons rather than hospitals and take some action that could change this sad state of affairs. If people knew the facts, they would insist that all mentally ill persons get the medical help they need. Mentally ill people who have the potential to commit violent crime can only be stopped by preventive treatment. The threat of punishment, even death, means nothing to a mentally ill person. There are more of them in jails and prisons in Texas than there are in mental hospitals. You can continue to lock up as many of them as you wish, and it will not stop the next one. To stop these most horrendous crimes, and be safe in our homes and on our streets, prevention is the only answer. Much grief and tragedy could spared all our society by using our tax dollars to help our mentally ill instead of brutalizing and destroying them. Many lives could be saved. Many families would be spared suffering and heartache, and society as a whole would benefit from a safer and more humane world. The State of Texas is almost at the bottom of the 50 states in resources for the mentally ill and yet they are at the very top in prisons and executions. There is something wrong with this picture.
Texas
Criminal Justice Reform Coalition . Last Updated on 04/08/04 webmaster@namiscc.org |
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