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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKalief Browder, 1993–2015: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three
years
Last fall, I wrote about a young man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He had been arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he insisted he had not committed. Then he spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times. Once, in February, 2012, he ripped his bedsheet into strips, tied them together to create a noose, and tried to hang himself from the light fixture in his cell.
In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a bannister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital, not far from his home in the Bronx. When I met him, in the spring of 2014, he appeared to be more stable.
Then, late last year, about two months after my story about him appeared, he stopped going to classes at Bronx Community College. During the week of Christmas, he was confined in the psych ward at Harlem Hospital. One day after his release, he was hospitalized again, this time back at St. Barnabas. When I visited him there on January 9th, he did not seem like himself. He was gaunt, restless, and deeply paranoid. He had recently thrown out his brand-new television, he explained, because it was watching me.
After two weeks at St. Barnabas, Browder was released and sent back home. The next day, his lawyer, Paul V. Prestia, got a call from an official at Bronx Community College. An anonymous donor (who had likely read the New Yorker story) had offered to pay his tuition for the semester. This happy news prompted Browder to re-enroll. For the next few months he seemed to thrive. He rode his bicycle back and forth to school every day, he no longer got panic attacks sitting in a classroom, and he earned better grades than he had the prior semester.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-browder-1993-2015
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)and an indictment of our broken criminal justice system.
JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)I posted about his case. What a tragedy for an innocent.
brer cat
(24,566 posts)It is no wonder he came out of Rikers a broken man.
I do hope he has found peace.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)WTF?
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)I believe the man that accused him was here without right to be (not a green card holder or his visa ran out) and he had to leave the country.
Thing is - he's probably out there in the world still - making stuff up - and ruining innocent peoples' lives.
He'll answer for it some day.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)This kid - he was KID - a teenager when he was falsely accused of a crime - showed a strength and resilience that is rare in this world today.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)So sad, I can't imagine finding a loved one who killed himself. Life is terrible sometimes.
hlthe2b
(102,282 posts)Last edited Mon Jun 8, 2015, 05:39 PM - Edit history (1)
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)The State VS. The People
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)God, so horrifying.