Brickbat: Filed Away and Forgotten
Officials in Jackson County, Indiana, have agreed to pay $7.25 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of a mentally ill man who starved to death over 20 days while being held in solitary confinement at a local jail. Joshua McLemore was found lying naked and confused on the floor of his apartment by a maintenance worker and taken to a hospital. McLemore was arrested at that hospital after pulling a nurse's hair. Video from the jail showed McLemore screaming and talking incoherently. He lost nearly 45 pounds during his incarceration.
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Seems like a significant overpayment to the family for someone they weren’t taking care of themselves.
Did they make a deduction for the successful weight loss program?
Would have been $10m otherwise.
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Yes, that justifies the State taking over responsibility and then doing an even better job of neglecting him.
He was an adult. He was not his relatives’ responsibility. He was alive when the cops collected him. He was dead soon after because they neglected him.
What kind of statism apologist thinks any of this State action is justified by any principles or even pragmatic goals? If you think him dying was just fine, why waste all that time when a single bullet would have done the job sooner and cheaper, even including cleanup?
I see that reading isn’t your forte this morning. I didn’t say anything about letting the prison officials who perpetrated the event off the hook. I said that paying his family $7.25M of taxpayer dollars for someone they don’t seem to have taken very good care of is rather excessive.
Please quote where I said the state’s actions were justified.
Please show where you assigned any blame to the State. Far as I can tell, you assigned it all to the relatives. I said nothing about whether the relatives deserved any payout, yet that’s your defense for not saying the State fucked up.
There were a whole bunch of things I didn’t say in my comment. Am I responsible for your interpretation of my silence on all of those matters as well?
Quit flailing and admit you jumped the fucking gun. Or don’t. Whatever.
About as soon as you admit taking the side of the State.
I’ll see if I can make this clear. I was not on that jury, if there was one, I was not the judge. I don’t know how valid their claim was. They probably don’t deserve the money.
But the State was absolutely in the wrong and deserves to be punished. Unfortunately, our legal system goes out of its way to protect itself, and making taxpayers pay for its malfeasance is about the closest it will ever get to justice.
You could have condemned the State, but you chose to condemn the relatives.
You showed your priorities. Be proud of being a fucking statist.
Ok, retard.
But the State was absolutely in the wrong and deserves to be punished.
You can’t “punish” the state. It doesn’t feel any pain. It has no money. It doesn’t have any morals or remorse. It doesn’t learn any lessons.
He was an adult. He was not his relatives’ responsibility.
Then they shouldn’t be entitle to compensation for his death either.
$7.25 million? Now I know what to do with crazy uncle Eddie.
I do have that one cousin…
Did you send cousin squirrel a Christmas card this year?
I have not talked to cousin squirrel in twenty years. It was the screaming at the demons in his head and beating up his father in my grandmother’s kitchen that really crossed the line there. It was pretty tragic. I used to really look up to him as a kid.
I question the math. 45 lbs. in 20 days?!
If accurate, this suggests severe dehydration. No one can lose 45 lbs. of fat and muscle that quickly. A lot of it has to be water.
The silver lining is that Jackson County saved money on the nut job’s coffin since he was about three stone lighter and would fit in a smaller model.
In the days before nursing homes were common, I suspect it was not uncommon for a burdened family to lock the door to Grandma’s or Crazy Uncle Al’s bedroom for a few weeks, and call the coroner when the odor started getting bad.
Hysterical and violent sister Julie apparently fell down the stairs a dozen times that day. The last time ensured she would no longer be down for breakfast.
OK, let’s clear up some Fake News.
a mentally ill man who starved to death
Wrong.
Fact check: He ate and drank very little of whatever the jail staff slipped through a slot in his cell door. Instead, he threw his meals on the floor and sometimes nibbled on the Styrofoam boxes his food came in.
And this: His mother decided to withdraw life support on Aug. 10, 2021.
Also – let’s not obfuscate the fact that “mentally ill” and “drug addict” are often difficult to tell apart. Why should we assume the former when we have clear evidence of the latter?
That’s one of many arguments to STOP SUPPORTING DRUG USE.
ps. Want to guess his drug of choice? Consider the way he presented and acted. Surprise not surprise, of course it’s meth!
But let’s be fair. It seems like this otherwise perfectly normal guy DID have a psychotic break after his girlfriend died. And everyone knew it. Yet, instead of getting him help, they did NOTHING as he continued a long-time addiction to drugs and became more and more unhinged, to the point of becoming a danger to himself and others – culminating the REASON he ended up in that cell, because the nurse he attacked pressed charges.
But why would a local jail know ANY of that? He acted like meth addicts do. They fed him, they gave him access to the bathroom and to showers, and when he fought them, they still did what they could to protect him from himself.
The big question I have is how he went 20 days in a holding cell without being put in front of a judge. THAT’S the only thing that should upset you about this story. There’s no reason that should have taken so long.
Unless Jackson County is a hotbed of drug crimes which *checks notes* yep, it is. Shocker.
Brickbat: if you support drug use, this guy’s death is partially on you.
Yet, instead of getting him help…
I would be surprised if the help they could get him would look much different than this.
The prison who made a pretense of taking care of him got taxpayer dollars and the family who made no such pretense got taxpayer dollars. Seems like the taxpayers should demand better.
Mentally ill, addict or otherwise, once they took him into custody, they had a responsibility to keep this man alive, not contribute to his demise. Maybe they should’ve moved him to a psychiatric hospital and kept him restrained or under guard and let his treatment continue?
Regardless, you conflate drug USE with drug ABUSE/ADDICTION when they are two very separate issues. Most people USE drugs of one sort or another. Of those, only a small number actually ABUSE drugs.
Take alcohol, the most commonly used and abused drug in America and most nations. Most drinkers are occasional users of the drug alcohol; alcoholics ABUSE and become physically and psychologically dependent on alcohol.
I and many other non-drinkers don’t ‘support’ either. Apart from hypocritical, sanctimonious statists, there are few things more irritating than a drunk. In spite of that, people are free to choose either course and both casual drinkers and booze addicts are only typically punished when they violate someone’s rights or damage property. Rightly so!
Conversely, few people support drug ABUSE of any kind. Most loudly condemn any sort of drug USE, even though they, too use ‘acceptable’ legal drugs. Logical disconnects like these are why we’ve had a destructive and exorbitantly costly, utterly failed ‘War on (some) Drugs’ in the ‘land of the free’ for over five decades now. Look how many rubes cheer it on, insisting that if we just ‘condemn’ certain behaviors, they’ll magically go away! Stories like these are what a couple trillion dollars and the evisceration of liberty gets us? I call that a real rousing success!
Problem here is judging government programs and prohibitions by their stated goals and not their actual, horrific and all-too predictable outcomes! I mean, if prohibition worked, by now these drugs wouldn’t be available for people to use OR abuse or get addicted to, right?
Much to statists’ chagrin, a few people still support freedom, even when people choose to do stupid, self-destructive things with said freedom. As long as the NAP is followed, freedom requires such reciprocal tolerance.
And remember: if you support the magical (delusional?) thinking integral to Prohibition and statism, this guy’s death is on YOU and your ilk!
Mentally ill, addict or otherwise, once they took him into custody, they had a responsibility to keep this man alive, not contribute to his demise.
They didn’t “contribute to his demise.” That would entail having intentionally done something to help kill him. And they didn’t even do that. His mom did.
They fed him, they availed toiletries to him, they even cleaned and put him in clean clothes against heavy pushback. Are we going to fill the psych hospitals with every methed out tweaker that gets put in custody? Were there even any psych spots available? Would it have changed anything if this nutter methhead was doing all this in a psych ward instead?
And what is it you think they could have done to help? Even if he had a mental health guy there keeping an eye on him, it’s not like they could push psychiatric drugs on the guy. Not without involuntary commitment which – wait for it – requires a court hearing.
The lack of which, you’ll note, was the biggest issue and problem here that I identified in my original post.
Everything about this story is just Monday Morning Quarterbacking. And if you’re going to point to the settlement as their admission that they could have played it different (which, of course they could – but who cares) – just keep in mind where that settlement money is coming from and how little they care about it vs. continued bad press and a trial in the media.
Regardless, you conflate drug USE with drug ABUSE/ADDICTION when they are two very separate issues. … Conversely, few people support drug ABUSE of any kind.
Nonsense. This is a disingenuous argument. It’s like saying, “I support abortion, but I’d never have one.” Sure, they might not, and maybe they even tsk tsk at anyone who does. But they happily defend the ability to get one on demand with no questions asked.
By empowering an activity, you’re de facto supporting it when people do thing. Supporting drug use is supporting drug abuse; just like supporting legal abortion is supporting people HAVING those legal abortions.
And we see this illustrated all the time after, say… a mass shooting. They don’t just blame the shooter – they blame everyone who supports 2A. And, honestly, that’s kinda fair – because our support of that right empowers those who then abuse that right.
We take the bad with the good, VV. It’s just how it is. The real question is: is what we’re supporting so valuable that we’re willing to accept its abuse?
Well, what’s the social/cultural value in stoners taking bong rips at their leisure, when the other shoe drops with massive crime, violence, trafficking, addiction, and death?
And, for that matter – what’s the ratio of drug users to drug abusers, or abortion supporters to abortion committers? I’ll bet it’s a whole lot more than gun owners (let alone 2A supporters) to mass shooters; or even alcohol drinkers to alcoholics. The higher that ratio, the less defensible the subject matter.
Officials in Jackson County, Indiana, have agreed to
paygive away $7.25 million of other people’s money tosettleavoid the inconvenience to them of a lawsuit brought by the family of a mentally ill manThere, FTFY