Two years, and no one realized this man couldn't hear them? And the Bushistas want even more private contractors in charge of prisons?
:mad:
Joseph Heard, the deaf, mute and mentally disabled man who was mistakenly held in the D.C. jail for nearly two years, will receive between $1.2 million and $1.5 million from the District and a private contractor to settle a three-year-old lawsuit under an agreement approved yesterday by a federal judge.
The District also agreed to pay reasonable attorney fees for the law firm Heard used, although that amount remains in dispute. The private contractor, which provided medical services at the jail and was responsible for monitoring Heard, agreed to pay $640,000.
snip
Heard was arrested in November 1998 on a misdemeanor charge of unlawful entry and ordered committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital several months later. After doctors found him mentally incompetent to stand trial, a D.C. Superior Court judge in October 1999 dismissed the charge and ordered him set free.
But he was taken to the jail instead because computer records erroneously showed that he had an outstanding charge in another case. Although a records officer at the jail later learned that this charge, too, had been dismissed, the paperwork authorizing Heard's release never arrived.
Heard, who had received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, stayed at the jail until Aug. 13, 2001, after jail officials reviewing the files of inmates in the mental health unit wondered why they could not locate his records.
During those 22 months, he received no visits from family members, friends or attorneys. He often scrawled the word "innocent" on scraps of paper and tried to communicate through another inmate that his jailing was a big mistake, but guards and mental health staff ignored his pleas, according to Heard and several witnesses who gave depositions in his lawsuit.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401340.html