System failed inmate who killed himself, St. Louis official says

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Investigators in St. Louis are trying to determine why Joshua Turner never got the psychiatric evaluation he deserved, and how he was allowed to kill himself.

The 18-year-old was found hanging in his cell at the jail known as the workhouse on Monday. He managed to hang himself with a bed sheet even though he was on suicide watch.

Turner had been jailed for a year as his court case lingered. A judge ordered the psychiatric exam in May, but no report has been filed with the court.

"It's a horrible situation," public safety director Charles Bryson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "The system broke down."

Bryson said an investigation has two tracks.

"What happened that night?" he asked. "And what kept him from going into a psychiatric facility or getting treatment?"

Turner was charged in December 2006 with property damage for allegedly damaging a window, drywall and a broom at the Boys and Girls Town of Missouri. He was jailed at the workhouse, a medium-security jail, in January 2007.

Turner was mildly mentally retarded and was hearing voices, said Patrick Schommer, the assistant to the city's commissioner of corrections.

During his incarceration, things got worse, Schommer said. He refused to take his medicine, a drug called Haldol. He was confined to a 4-by-8 foot cell, coming out an hour a day so corrections staff could clean up the feces. His last family visit was by his mother in July.

"His visitor card is pretty much blank," Schommer said.

A doctor visited him Dec. 7 for his court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. Both corrections officers on duty Monday in the pod that included Turner's cell have been put on administrative leave.

A relative, Kisha Lee-Hamilton, said that two years ago, Turner spoke of killing himself, even asking how he would look in the casket.

Lee-Hamilton said: "I think it's a travesty, and someone needs to be held accountable."

Court files indicate Turner was to plead guilty in May but his lawyer asked the judge to continue the case for a psychiatric evaluation. The case was stalled until it could be determined whether Turner was capable of understanding the charges.

Bryson said he is trying to determine what treatment, if any, Turner was getting at the jail. "The bottom line for me is, did we do what we were supposed to do?"

The city contracts with a private company called CMS, or Correctional Medical Services of Creve Coeur, to provide health and mental health care to inmates at the Justice Center and the workhouse. Bryson said CMS's contract, worth about $7.5 million a year, expires at the end of June.

CMS Spokesman Ken Fields declined to talk about the specific case, but said, in general, that CMS staffers providing medical, mental health and dental care to inmates do a good job.

Schommer, who is the jail's medial liaison with CMS, said he's been happy with the work of CMS. About 200 to 300 of the workhouse's 1,900 inmates have psychiatric problems, he said.

But what the inmates with mental illness need, Schommer said, is something far different than what the jail can provide.

"We're not a psychiatric facility," Schommer said.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com