Self-Diagnosis

Paul Pfeifer writes in today's LA TIMES ("Accused killer called fit to share jail cell") a follow-up to his article yesterday ("Jailers are asked how killer was able to strike again"), which I also blogged ("The Immensity of the Process"). The new reported statements are worth looking at because they illustrate how efforts to make needed change can get sidetracked.

L.A. County Jail inmate Kurt Karcher had been in a one-man prison cell for over a year and under treatment in state prison for bipolar disorder. This mentally-disturbed, alleged former white- supremacist gangmember, convicted of killing an attorney, and allegedly having admitted strangling to death his state prison cellmate, was nevertheless housed by the County with a Latino jail cellmate, whom he also allegedly strangled to death 4 days later.

L.A. County jail and California state prison officials have asserted that county jailers weren't told Karcher's background of insanity, racism, and murder, because the state didn't think it was necessary.

As I explained in yesterday's blog, there is reason to suspect that jailers did know of Karcher's background and locked an inmate of another race in with him anyway.

Today, we have a report that the jail mental health workers certified him as safe for general housing. This is a fresh "office error" explanation for the incident. L.A. County Jail psychologist Robert Fish offers that "some of our most severely disturbed inmates with mental illness deny they have problems." So, he implies, housing errors like this one result.

That's not very persuasive. A hallmark of mental illness is that the sufferer is convinced he or she is fine. That's no news. Dr. Fish implies that jail mental health workers must nevertheless simply rely on prisoner self-diagnosis in making their housing recommendations, either without asking for, or without looking at, records that might disclose a background of, for example, racism, mental illness, and in-custody homicide.

In addition to being fairly implausible, Dr. Fish's statements don't address the real issue. Didn't the state tell the county jail about Karcher's history? Withholding such information would have put county jail guards at risk of injury or death. So it's unlikely the information was, in fact, withheld by the state correctional system.

Dr. Fish's statements simply steer the discussion away from the holes in the officials' story, and into a relatively inoffensive examination of mental health cell assignment procedures. If things continue in that direction, the County will end up having to look at changing an office protocol. A few months later, they'll decide they don't have to make an adjustment, or that they do have to make an adjustment. But the question of whether procedures were ignored in this case, and what, if anything, to do about that, will have fallen by the wayside.

That's the way it works.

The Immensity of the Process

Stuart Pfeifer writes in today's LA TIMES about the alleged second inmate murder by the same LA County jail prisoner, named Kurt Karcher ("Jailers are asked how killer was able to strike again"). Because some of the information in the article is based on unreliable sources, there's no way of knowing what really happened, but it offers a useful starting point for comment on the jails.

Let's start with what is likely to be true. Two inmates are dead. One was named Scott Manning. He was in the Lancaster, California State Prison for burglary. That means that, at minimum, Manning unlawfully stuck some part of his body into a building structure with the intention of committing a crime. He died March 7, 2006. He was strangled by cellmate Kurt Karcher. (Karcher allegedly admits killing him, but claims self-defense.) Karcher was serving a life sentence for robbing and strangling a California attorney who had used his services as a male prostitute. The article doesn't tell us the attorney's gender, but it looks like Karcher may have been a violent homosexual, who killed his cellmate while serving a life sentence. He was assigned thereafter to a one-man prison cell for more than a year.

In order to be tried on this second homicide charge, Karcher was transferred to LA County Jail so he could easily be transported to a downtown LA courtroom. But he wasn't put in one of the County jail's 1,041 one-man cells. Despite his alleged background as a white-supremacist gangmember and mentally-disturbed bipolar disorder sufferer and killer, he was put in a cell with Latino Jose Daniel Cruz, whom he strangled to death 4 days later. Cruz was in jail for threatening his sister. His sister says she hadn't even wanted him arrested. (Just as a sidelight, it would be useful if the public understood that once they call the police for help with an abusive family member, they lose control over the process. They may only want someone to be removed from the home tonight, or given a good talking-to by someone in authority. Doesn't matter what they want. If the police want otherwise, that family member is going to jail, where they may die. There is some truth to the nasty phrase, "9-1-1 means death".)

The TIMES article focuses on one issue: why weren't LA county jail officials told by California state prison officials that Karcher, the prostitute turned killer, had already strangled one cellmate? State prison officials explain they didn't think it was necessary, because detectives, from the same Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department that runs the jails, had been involved in the prison death investigation. So no need to check a box or scribble a line saying, "Better put this killer in a one-man cell - that's what we've been doing."

Are the state prison officials really that careless?

The article includes statements about "the immensity of the process" and the "apparent communications gap between state and county jail officials, who exchange hundreds of inmates a day."

Sorry. That's like talking about the thousands of airplanes flying around thousands of buildings every year, and suggesting the World Trade Towers were hit by accident. This inmate was a big deal murderer on trial for a second, in-custody, murder. He didn't make a single move without everyone checking everything twice, every step of the way. Leaving that information out would have put jail guards at deadly risk, too. Not very likely.

So how did this omission occur? Or, did it occur?

One thing we know about government agencies, especially government agencies with a claim to a need for secrecy, is that their statements to the press are just not completely reliable. They cover for each other. When under attack, sometimes they say things to the media, critical things, that are completely inaccurate.

So this story, about accidentally omitting to tell jail officials the critical alleged facts about multiple killer Karcher, is an unreliable story. That leaves the possibility that jail officials were, in fact, told his background. Under the circumstances, it's actually the more likely possibility.

At LA Police Watch, we get complaints from inmates that jail officials put them in a cell with known violent cellmates; that jail officials provoked violence against them by telling the general inmate population that they were troublemakers who brought punishment down on all; or that they were child molesters. That jail officials opened the cell door and then stood by and did nothing while an inmate was being beaten. It is reasonable to suspect that the LA County Jail does deliberately put inmates in with known dangerous cellmates. On the limited and unreliable information available today, that seems a real possibility in this incident.

Karcher was claiming self-defense in his second murder charge. If his third alleged victim, cellmate Cruz, had survived - had only been threatened or beaten, not killed - Cruz could have been called to the stand and damaged or destroyed Karcher's claim of self-defense in death number two. (For example, the Spector prosecutor has been parading surviving former female houseguests of Phil Spector's gunplay, to undermine Spector's claim that he was not holding the gun when his final female houseguest received a fatal headshot. Victims of criminal conduct that was similar to the charged offense are very effective against claims of innocence.)

There's also the fact that a lot of cases are made on the basis of testimony about self-incriminating statements allegedly overheard by cellmate informants. Can't have a cellmate informant in a one-man cell. And a terrified cellmate, eager for transfer to a witness-protection cell, may listen very closely for self-incriminating statements.

Or, it could just have been done to punish cellmate number two. We have all seen countless TV and film scenes where the hero cop happily assures the bad guy that when he goes to jail a violent cellmate is going to rape him. Those scenes are played for us because the U.S. public vigorously approves of such prisoner treatment. And what the public approves, the prisoners are likely to suffer (and later see explained as a result of the "the immensity of the process"), regardless of what's written in some dusty constitution on a shelf somewhere.

That's the way it works.