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| Deaf Man Wrongly Jailed for Two Years in U.S. |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 09/13/2001 |
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A deaf man with a serious mental illness who cannot speak was wrongly jailed for nearly two years in the nation's capital even though minor charges against him were dismissed, prison officials said recently. The 42-year-old spent 669 days in a solitary cell in a mental health unit of Washington DC's city jail until his case file was retrieved from storage where it had been put in error. Prisoners' rights groups lambasted the D.C. Department of Corrections and said the case highlighted the serious lack of attention given to a growing number of mentally ill and disabled inmates in America. The inmate, Joseph Heard, had a history of arrests in the capital, Maryland and Florida, and was detained on a misdemeanor charge for trespassing on the grounds of George Washington University in November 1998. After his arrest, Heard was sent to a mental hospital where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, claiming in writing and through interpreters that he was related to late President John F. Kennedy. Even though the charges against him were eventually dropped, Heard was transferred in September 1999 to the city's detention center, where he stayed until his release on Aug. 13, said a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections. It was only when jail officials were recently reviewing case files of inmates in the mental health unit that they realized Heard's file was missing. It was finally tracked down to a storage center in Maryland and Heard was released, voluntarily returning to the mental hospital. |
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