This website is dedicated to resolving the mystery of my brother’s death and to improving the lives of similarly disabled Americans. Larry Neal was a mentally ill heart patient who was secretly arrested in mid-July 2003 and detained until his death on August 1, 2003, in Shelby County Jail in Memphis, Tennessee. Larry spent most of his life from early childhood (age 9 through his mid-20’s) in Western State Mental Hospital in Bolivar, Tennessee. As you may know, during the 1970’s, many such institutions were closed or no longer kept mental patients who presented no apparent threat to the public. After release from Western State, Larry was arrested numerous times for misdemeanors connected with his handicap, paranoid schizophrenia. His family’s requests to the State of Tennessee that Larry be readmitted to an inpatient mental health facility were not granted except on a temporary basis from time to time for crisis intervention. The last ten years of his life, Larry suffered from severe respiratory problems and a heart condition that necessitated prescription drugs for his survival. During the 18 days of Larry’s final incarceration, his family and State-appointed social worker searched for him as a missing person. The jail falsely and repeatedly reported that neither Larry Neal nor a John Doe meeting his physical description was incarcerated in that facility. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Larry received none of his vital prescription heart and psychiatric drugs during incarceration, which likely caused his death, despite the fact that:
Larry had suffered contemporaneous arrests in that very same facility for misdemeanors related to his mental illness, with the last arrest only two weeks prior to the incarceration that killed him;
Memphis police had supplied emergency transport to mental hospitals for emergency treatment during Larry’s psychotic episodes for more than 20 years; and
Memphis police were fully aware of Larry’s heart condition and had contact information for his social worker, who was usually called when Larry was arrested on public nuisance charges, panhandling, and the like.
Prior to Larry’s final incarceration, whenever he was arrested on public nuisance charges and other misdemeanors related to his handicap, the police would contact his social worker or family and Larry would be released into their care. Given the long history Larry had with Memphis Police, it is impossible for Larry’s family to believe that Shelby County Jail did not know that Larry was under arrest during the nearly three weeks that his family agonized over his whereabouts. The police repeatedly denied having Larry and did nothing to help search for this mentally ill heart patient precisely because police knew that no search was necessary. Fingerprinting for accurate identification is a routine part of arrest procedures. Yet, Larry’s family was allowed to spend weeks looking for Larry while he suffered and died in jail. One would assume that police became weary of their enforced role as caretaker to this mentally ill man who would stand and sing loud on street corners, bother pedestrians for handouts, eat in grocery stores without paying first, etc.
At the time of Larry’s death, Shelby County Jail was already under federal overview by the U. S. Justice Department following suit by the U.S.A. One would think that overview by the United States Department of Justice would ensure openness and honesty from everyone connected with Larry’s death. Contrarily, for more than four years, all requests by Larry’s family to government entities, including the Justice Department, for reports, explanations, and accountability regarding my brother’s euthanasia have been ignored, or we were told no reports exist.
We attribute the fact that Larry’s family has never received any information explaining Larry’s incarceration and death to THE COCHRAN FIRM. Unfortunately, Larry’s family hired The Cochran Firm to file Larry’s wrongful death suit, never knowing that The Cochran Firm’s managing partner in the law firm’s Memphis office, Julian Bolton, Esq., had a vested interest in seeing to it that our suit against Shelby County Jail never got filed. [See Ex. 1 – Comm. Bolton.] I cannot begin to tell you how hurt we were to learn that The Cochran Firm deliberately tricked my grieving, elderly mother into signing a contract for legal representation which that law firm never had the smallest intention of honoring. Rather, it was necessary for The Cochran Firm to trick Larry’s family into believing we had lawyers so that no honest lawyer would ever get the opportunity to really work on our behalf and file suit against Shelby County Jail. Because we planned legal action, it was not surprising that Shelby County Government was not forthcoming with information about Larry’s incarceration and death. However, if Larry’s family had indeed had an honest attorney, those records would have been subpoenaed and released during discovery. That is exactly why The Cochran Firm contracted with my mother – to prevent her hiring an honest attorney with no conflict of interest in the matter of Larry’s wrongful death. [See Ex. 2 – Death Certificate.]
To what civil rights organization can disenfranchised people turn for assistance when they are aggrieved by African Americans in positions of power?
Please contact your congressional representative today and demand that hospitalization replace incarceration for the mentally ill people in your state. http://www.house.gov/writerep
Next, I offer a brief chronicle of my family’s fruitless efforts spanning over four years to get information and demand accountability for Larry’s death:
Immediately after notification of Larry’s death on August 1, 2003, his family contracted with The Cochran Firm to file a wrongful death action against Shelby County Jail and negligence suits against the State of Tennessee and Larry’s final care home. The Cochran Firm did not reveal to its clients the fact that the firm’s Managing Partner of the Memphis office, Julian Bolton, Esq. was a 20+year member of the Shelby County Commission, which is the entity that owns and operates the jail where Larry died. The Cochran Firm used its position as our attorneys to shield Shelby County Jail from our lawsuit by accepting our case and allowing it to languish on its shelves while the statute ran. After successfully preventing our suit against Shelby County, Bolton was promoted to the position of Treasurer of the Board of Commissioners, and then to Chairman. Ironically, Julian Bolton is/was also a valued member on the Midtown Board of Mental Health. [See Ex. 3 - Contract.]
The Cochran Firm lied to clients before contract, stating that the firm’s conflict check resulted in no impediments to their representation. This firm lied to the Neals in writing after contract regarding a fictitious and nonexistent investigation and discovery process it was conducting and cautioned us not to discuss the Larry’s jail death with anyone, because that law firm would handle everything. We were told before signing contract that The Cochran Firm’s Atlanta, Georgia office and Memphis, Tennessee office would work together to get justice for my family (My mother and I are Atlanta area residents). But, instead of behaving as the Neals’ attorneys, The Cochran Firm merely held Larry’s wrongful death case inactive for nearly 11 months while the statute of limitations ran (12 months in Tennessee). By the time the Neals found out about The Cochran Firm’s ties to their defendant and the law firm’s lies about a nonexistent discovery process, it was too late for another law firm to accept our case on a contingent fee basis. (The poor in America suffer many injustices for the lack of affordable legal counsel.) Later, The Cochran Firm’s attorney assigned to our case, David McLaughlin, lied to the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility during its investigation of the Neals’ malpractice allegations.
The Neals filed suit pro se for fraud against The Cochran Firm, having their Complaint served to the law firm’s “Atlanta office,” which was the office the Neals originally contacted and arranged for legal representation on August 1, 2003, immediately following Larry’s death. [See Ex. 4 – Complaint] This Atlanta law office answered our suit in the name of Cochran Cherry Givens Smith & Sistrunk, P.C. (“CCGSS”) and claimed in its discovery responses not to be The Cochran Firm (as it had represented to the Neals prior to contract signing and contrary to much public advertising), and it denied any affiliation whatsoever with other Cochran Firm offices. [See Ex. 5 - CCGSS Response to Interrogatories.][See Ex. 6 - Cochran Firm Web Pages.] & [See Ex. 6a - More Cochran Firm Web Pages.] Instead, it claimed before the court to be a law firm completely “owned and operated within the State of Georgia.” The Georgia Secretary of State’s office, however, issued a report that no such entity as Cochran Cherry Givens Smith & Sistrunk, P.C. was registered with the State of Georgia. [See Ex. 7 – GA Sec. of State Search.] Further investigation and search of public records revealed no firm called Cochran Cherry Givens Smith & Sistrunk, P.C. registered with the City of Atlanta or as a d/b/a with the Fulton County Superior Court. So this law office, well known and advertised as the Atlanta office of The Cochran Firm, presented itself to the court as being a completely disinterested third party but was nevertheless allowed to answer our complaint against The Cochran Firm and to have our suit dismissed by Georgia Superior Court in May 2006.
Shelby County Jail
Shelby County Government
Shelby County Attorney
In response to my inquiry, the County Attorney declared “We did nothing wrong,” but rendered no explanation or report regarding Larry’s incarceration and death in jail. [See Ex. 8 – Letter from Brian L. Kuhn, Shelby County Attorney, dated 8/17/06.]
Shelby County Coroner’s Office
The coroner’s office faxed the Neals a poor copy of Larry’s autopsy drawings with sketchy narrative descriptions, but lacking a full narrative report. When asked for a detailed autopsy report and a coroner’s investigative report, the Coroner’s office replied that there were no further reports on Larry’s death. According to the autopsy, Larry died of a heart attack. However, the autopsy report did not explain the fresh head injury on Larry’s body, and Larry’s family does not consider the Shelby County Coroner’s office a credible resource.
Larry’s autopsy was performed by the office of Shelby County’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. O. C. Smith. This same man was later indicted for faking his own kidnapping after placing a note on his person and accusing himself of lying in favor of Memphis police in a capital murder case. The accused in this case was facing a death sentence, having maintained throughout his trial that it was a policeman who shot the policeman he was accused of killing. [See Ex. 9 - Smith Indictment.]
Shelby County Jail had such a grievous record of violations of inmates’ civil rights that in 2000, the jail was sued by the United States of America. At the time of Larry’s death, the jail was operating under the terms of a settlement agreement related to that suit. Section IV of the Agreement between the United States of America and Shelby County Jail specifically required that the jail make a semi-annual report to the Justice Department. The semi-annual report was to include the individual monthly reports, which the jail was required to keep regarding its operations, as well as mortality review reports on any deaths of inmates during the reporting period. [See Ex. 10 – Agreement - USA/Shelby Co., Section IV.] In May 2005, I wrote a letter to the Justice Department, which was addressed to Terrell L. Harris, Mellie Nelson, Mary Bohan, and Tammie Gregg, and requested Shelby County’s report on Larry’s death. The Justice Department reported that that agency never received any report regarding Larry Neal from Shelby County Jail/ Government. [See Ex. 11 – Lt to USDJ and Response 1.] [See Ex. 12 – USDJ Report 7-26-2005.]
Larry’s family believed strongly that the reason The Cochran Firm accepted Larry’s wrongful death case was partly to protect Shelby County Jail from reporting its breach of that jail’s Agreement with the U.S.A. regarding inmate intake procedures and the care of the mentally ill and physically handicapped persons under arrest in that facility. [See Ex. 10 – Agreement – USA/Shelby Co., Section III]
Larry’s family realized that any reports from the jail to the Justice Department that included July and August 2003 and failed to report Larry’s incarceration and death were misleading at best, and likely fraudulent. Larry’s family wanted to verify that the Shelby County Jail had in fact lied by omission in its failure to report to the Justice Department information about Larry’s incarceration and death. Therefore, on March 29, 2006, I sent a request under the Open Records Act to Chief John L. Wodatch, of the United States Justice Department, for copies of the jail’s reports that included July and August 2003. For 16 months, we received no response from The Justice Department regarding our request for reports from Shelby County Government/Jail for the time period when Larry was incarcerated and died in that facility. [See Ex. 13 – Lt to USDJ – 3-29-06.]
May 2007, I wrote United States senators asking for their help in ascertaining records and justice for Larry, and requesting that our government rethink its current trend of jailing rather than hospitalizing severely mentally ill Americans. Thanks to intervention by Senator Chambliss, on August 15, 2007, the Justice Department finally responded to our March 2006 letter. However, the Justice Department’s response did not include a single copy of any record filed by Shelby County Jail for the time period of Larry’s secret incarceration and death. Instead, Nelson D. Hermilla, of the Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts Branch of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, wrote, “After extensive search in the Civil Rights Division, we are unable to locate records responsive to your request . . .” [See Ex. 14 – USDJ Report 8-15-07.] The Justice Department did not explain why Shelby County Jail was apparently allowed to ignore its reporting responsibilities under the terms of its Agreement with the United States of America. Mr. Hermilla’s letter conflicted with information from the Shelby County Attorney, Brian L. Kuhn. Mr. Kuhn plainly stated in his August 17, 2006 letter to me that the jail’s semi-annual report, including a critical incident review report about Larry’s death, had been filed with the United States Department of Justice in accordance with the terms of the jail’s Agreement with the United States of America.
It is my understanding that in 2006, the Justice Department released Shelby County Jail from overview under the terms of the 2001 Agreement between the United States of America and Shelby County Jail. The Justice Department refuses to conduct an investigation regarding Larry Neal’s death, which occurred at that facility during the time of federal overview. Perhaps the Justice Department seeks to avoid shedding more light on an embarrassing problem – our nation’s lack of care for its mentally ill citizens. In October 2003, the year Larry died, Human Rights Watch, an organization dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world, issued a report indicating that America has more mentally ill persons in jail than in hospitals and that mentally ill offenders face mistreatment and neglect while incarcerated. (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2003/10/22/usdom6472.htm)
Please contact your congressional representative today and demand that hospitalization replace incarceration for the mentally ill people in your state. http://www.house.gov/writerep
Fulton County GA Superior Court
Hattie Neal and Mary Neal v. The Cochran Firm (Civil Action No. 2005CV104215 – filed 8/1/05 -- Fraud suit brought pro se against The Cochran Firm)
Judge Wendy Shoob dismissed our case against The Cochran Firm on May 3, 2006, with her Order citing three reasons:
The judge decided that the law office that presented itself to Larry’s family as being The Cochran Firm and which is widely advertised as being the Atlanta office of The Cochran Firm is in fact not The Cochran Firm. Meanwhile, the law office at 127 Peachtree Street continued to advertise its legal services as The Cochran Firm via rapid transit system television commercials, network television commercials, the Internet, etc. [See Ex. 6 and 6a – Internet Ads.]
Judge Shoob’s order dismissed our suit stating that Plaintiffs did not specifically allege fraud in their Complaint. You will note on the attached Complaint that (1) FRAUD is clearly listed as the cause of action on the court’s filing form completed by the Neals to initiate the court action; (2) throughout their Complaint, Plaintiffs allege fraud against The Cochran Firm; and (3) in the conclusion of their Complaint, Plaintiffs specifically asked for punitive damages for The Cochran Firm’s fraud against Plaintiffs. (See Plaintiff’s Complaint, p. 15, ¶ 113(b); and see the Complaint Filing Form.)
Finally, Judge Shoob’s order stated that Plaintiffs did not respond timely to CCGSS’s Motion to Dismiss. Frankly, the Neals did not know that they had to respond to a pleading supposedly filed by some firm which claimed not to be The Cochran Firm at all, which claimed to have no knowledge of the events that gave rise to our suit, which claimed to have absolutely no attorney/client relationship to the Neals, but claimed instead to be a completely disinterested third party. [See Ex. 15 - Order.]
Apparently, using an alias to dodge legal proceedings can be effective. In June 2007, I asked the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) about whether The Cochran Firm is guilty of perjury in Georgia Superior Court or whether it is guilty of false advertising. The FTC notified me that it has opened a file on this. (FTC Ref No. 10807359.)
Surprisingly, when the discovery period ended and it was time for the court to set a trial date, it was reported to the Neals that the Fulton County Superior Court Clerk’s Office had “lost” certain pleadings from the court’s file. [See Ex. 16 – Lt re: Lost Pleadings.] As a legal secretary for over a decade in Georgia, I have filed hundreds of pleadings with Fulton County Superior Court and worked alongside countless other legal secretaries, yet this is the only instance I ever heard of this court losing pleadings from its file, so this must be a rare occurrence. Furthermore, only two weeks prior to receiving the notification of “lost” pleadings, I had personally reviewed our court file under the watchful eye of a Superior Court clerk, and found the file to be in order. Documents were secured in a top-hole punch file folder, ordered with the earliest dates at the bottom. Many other documents had to be removed from our court file and then replaced for one to access and “lose” the defendant’s pleadings, one of which was the Motion to Dismiss, which CCGSS filed with the court eight months prior to Judge Shoob’s dismissal.
With Judge Shoob’s dismissal of our suit, Larry’s family was denied the opportunity of having a jury trial, and those responsible for Larry’s death and the subsequent cover-up were given yet another reprieve from complete public disclosure regarding the circumstances of Larry’s incarceration and death.
The selection of a Fulton County Superior Court judge for any given case is supposed to be by a random lottery process. However, Judge Shoob is likely the only judge on a Georgia Superior Court who ever presided over another case involving allegations of wrongful death against Memphis, Tennessee police. The Internet reports that in a case assigned to Judge Shoob through a change of venue several years ago, she ruled favorably for Memphis police regarding the admissibility of certain key evidence. Major coincidence? By this time, we understood that Larry’s family was unlikely to get any opportunity to have a fair hearing against The Cochran Firm in open court, perhaps even if we appealed to a higher court or filed against the firm in another venue. We understood that we would probably only receive more of the same treatment.
A Georgia court recently sentenced two black boys to prison for 10 years for killing a puppy. Even that dead dog got his day in court. Does this mean that the life of a mentally ill man is not equivalent to the worth of a dog?
Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility
In September 2005, we lodged a complaint against The Cochran Firm with the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility. Jesse D. Joseph, the Disciplinary counsel assigned to the case, performed a cursory investigation and then hastily dismissed the Neal’s case against David McLaughlin, The Cochran Firm’s attorney the Board held accountable for answering the Neals’ allegations against that law firm. Mr. Joseph closed the investigation within weeks, without asking to review any proof of wrongdoing against The Cochran Firm that the Neals had to present. The case was re-opened in the Spring of 2006, after the Neals informed the Board (by e-mail to all members) that Larry’s family was seeking justice in another venue (namely, the lawsuit filed against The Cochran Firm in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia).
By letter dated October 19, 2006, Lance B. Bracy, Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the Board, ruled, however, to close our case without any sanctions against The Cochran Firm. In so doing, the Board found that the Cochran Firm did nothing wrong in:
lying to its clients and concealing its conflict of interest from clients;
performing no substantive work on the client’s case during the 10.5 months it was under contract as the family’s attorneys, despite letters to its clients that discovery was going forth; and
falsifying documentation to the Board in its defense of the Neals’ allegations against that law firm. Somehow, e?mails which proved McLaughlin’s accounts to the Board were false were deleted from a folder in my Yahoo e-mail account within a couple of weeks of my letting the Board know that I had e?mail proof. How was McLaughlin to know that I had already forwarded those e-mails all over the country to law firms, friends, and family members as well as saved them on disc and given discs to various people to hold in the event that I ever needed them? (I rightly thought that a person or firm capable of being complicit in the possible euthanasia of a poor mentally ill man or the cover-up thereof was also capable of anything.) Therefore I had the proof of McLaughlin’s lies and submitted same to the Board. It was very disheartening when the Board dismissed our case against McLaughlin without ever commenting on the Neals’ material evidence regarding the unquestionably forged and fraudulent documents submitted to that body by McLaughlin.
It was obvious that the integrity of the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility’s investigation regarding The Cochran Firm’s treachery toward its clients was seriously compromised.
Georgia Bar
Georgia’s Board of Professional Responsibility gave no response whatsoever to the Neals’ September 2005 report to that agency about The Cochran Firm’s misdeeds. We made an appeal for help to various State of Georgia and federal agencies and other persons, and in July 2007, the Georgia Bar finally sent the Neals forms to file a formal complaint against the firm which we knew as The Cochran Firm’s Atlanta, Georgia office (called Cochran Cherry Givens Smith & Sistrunk, P.C. in Georgia Superior Court). Because of the lack of fair review and disciplinary action against The Cochran Firm by the Tennessee Bar as well as the Georgia Bar’s long delay in responding to our request for assistance, this complaint form remains in my file cabinet. We feel the Georgia Bar (after a two-year delay) finally sent Larry’s family the forms to file a formal complaint only because it was compelled to do so by the State of Georgia’s Attorney’s office and not because of any real interest in justice.
Having our complaint against The Cochran Firm altogether ignored by the Georgia Bar (until recent intervention by the Georgia Attorney’s office) and Tennessee Bar’s farce of an investigation indicate that lawyers investigating other lawyers for reason of client complaints simply may not work well enough to protect the public. The attorneys under investigation are valued members of and pay dues to the given bar that conducts their investigations. Perhaps small law offices should worry about sanctions, fines, or losing their licenses to practice law if those attorneys have violated the Code of Professional Conduct, but The Cochran Firm obviously had no reason for concern.
To my knowledge, I have only worked for ethical law firms that are meticulous in conducting conflict checks before contracting with anyone and forthcoming with clients about the results thereof. I believe that most attorneys behave with honesty toward their clients and opposing parties, and are conscientious and diligent in conducting their clients’ cases. Even after our experience with The Cochran Firm, I remain confident that most attorneys are men and women of integrity who fight earnestly but honestly on their clients’ behalf. However, when people find themselves in a situation like we were in with The Cochran Firm, wherein our attorneys were deviously working against us, clients unquestionably need and deserve a fair hearing before an impartial body -- not some club to which everyone involved is a member except the client who has been maltreated. Perhaps it is time to consider using citizens boards to preside over such investigations. After all, our juries are selected from the general populace, so why not use a similar methodology in examining complaints against lawyers?
DeKalb County, Georgia Police Department
Failed to investigate or respond in any way to the Neals’ report of phone tampering and removal of Yahoo e-mails that related to Larry Neal’s death. (Police report filed 5/10/06, with Officer Perkins, no. 2426, case no. 06-064301, Center Precinct)
MEDIA BLACKOUT
I have contacted the media repeatedly to no avail about these relevant news events. The mistreatment of dogs continues to take journalistic precedence in America, while my poor brother’s secret jail death and The Cochran Firm’s subsequent cover-up remain unreported. Perhaps this journalistic blackout is because of the advertising dollars the media earns from The Cochran Firm. That firm continues to advertise its law office at 127 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, Georgia, although that law office denied it is an office of The Cochran Firm in Georgia Superior Court in order to avoid responding to my family’s suit for its fraud. We remain hopeful that some journalists will become interested in our quest for information and justice regarding my brother’s death and launch an investigation, an investigation which Larry’s family cannot afford to finance and the Justice Department refuses to conduct. Meanwhile, we thank God for Bill Gates and others who made it possible for ordinary citizens to research and report their own issues via the Internet. In the absence of official government-issued reports, which Larry’s family lacks the means to substantiate anyway, we are hopeful that one of Larry’s fellow inmates or some sympathetic police officer or jail guard will some day visit our web site and come forward to tell us how things really were with Larry during his final incarceration, thereby helping to bring closure to his family.
The list of persons and entities the Neals contacted in our continual quest for assistance, information, and justice regarding Larry’s wrongful death is over four-years long, despite verifiable proof for all allegations. Numerous persons related to these events have resigned their jobs; however, this brings little comfort to Larry’s family, being yet deprived of full disclosure of the circumstances of Larry’s death and restitution by The Cochran Firm for its fraud. The details of our quest for justice in this matter are truly shameful for America, a country so concerned about human rights around the globe, with a creed of equality and justice for all of her citizens. This web site is a personal appeal for your assistance. Hopefully, our efforts to ascertain information and justice for Larry will also raise public awareness of the plight of the incarcerated mentally ill and assist thousands of mentally ill persons like Larry who yet languish in American jails. If you are interested in helping, please contact us.
Please contact your congressional representative today and demand that hospitalization replace incarceration for the mentally ill people in your state. http://www.house.gov/writerep
JAIL, HOMELESSNESS, AND EUTHANASIA — UNACCEPTABLE SOLUTIONS
A young mother became alarmed in her local grocery store when she realized that her active three-year-old son was no longer trotting along behind her as she shopped. She and the store personnel hurriedly searched up and down the aisles looking for him and calling his name. They found the little tot sitting on the floor near the checkout on aisle 7, surrounded by colorful candy wrappers. He had opened dozens of different candies and sampled each one! His mouth and chin were covered with chocolate, and melted candy was smeared across his shirt and on the floor around him. In a similar incident, my brother, Larry, walked into a supermarket one summer day, taking the opportunity to enjoy the air conditioning, for it was oppressively hot outside. As he walked down the fresh food aisle, his eyes fell on the rows of plump, sweet grapes. He stopped at that display, and with no effort to conceal his actions, Larry began to eat the grapes. They were cool and good, and he laughed aloud, delighted at how pleasant they tasted. Larry was interrupted in his consumption by an angry clerk who was yelling and pointing at him, directing the store guard to restrain that thief while the police were called. In fact, Larry was no more a thief than the three-year-old, because neither of them was acting out of malice, and in both scenarios an essential element of crime was missing: intent. Indeed, neither the three-year-old boy nor my mentally ill brother, in his diminished capacity, was capable of planning and executing a real crime. The child rebelled when his mother lifted him away from the sweet feast. The youngster began to cry loudly and struggle against his mother to get back to “his” candy. But the boy’s mother was bigger and stronger than he was, and she effortlessly carried him away from the scene of his “crime.” Contrarily, no one in Larry’s family was big or strong enough to extricate him from the many situations his mental illness caused as he wandered at will the streets of Memphis. Indeed, Larry’s family was not allowed to either restrict his movements or enforce psychiatric treatment and drugs to help him. After all, mentally unstable people like Larry have their rights!
There are those organizations that denounce enforced hospitalization and treatment of the mentally ill, calling such intervention a violation of civil rights. The sincere efforts of such organizations may benefit those mentally ill persons who manage to stay clear of our nation’s jails; however, for thousands of others like Larry, it is just as unreasonable to expect them to run their own lives without psychiatric drugs and restraint as it would have been for the young mother to allow her little boy to finish the candy at his leisure and then find his own way home. Let those organizations fight not only for the rights of the moderately mentally ill, but let them also fight for inpatient care for mentally ill men and women who are today serving time for committing crimes they cannot even understand as well as for scores of mentally ill persons who are homeless, living under wretched conditions and deprived of treatment that might restore many to useful lives.
LOOKING BACK
Our society has regressed a great deal over the last 30 years in caring for our chronically mentally ill citizens. The hospital where we visited Larry on Sundays when I was a child was a large, attractive and serene place with comfortable inside visiting areas, and for patients with outdoor privileges, there were manicured lawns with park benches. I remember watching as my mother sat with Larry under the shade of a large oak tree, speaking gently to him while holding his hand. On his good days, Larry could sit still and tell us about his therapy sessions and crafts classes and the hospital’s weekly social event. He and the other patients would try hard all week to remain orderly and follow instructions, lest they be denied attendance. Nowadays, only the very rich can hope to have their sick loved ones in such an atmosphere with psychiatric care, drug therapy, and a skilled, compassionate staff. The indigent in America who just cannot seem to stop disturbing the peace and show proper respect for the law (which many of them cannot even understand) are thrown into jail for their illegal psychosis, their criminal disability. Is there really that great a difference between the cost of imprisoning as opposed to hospitalizing those mentally ill persons whose conditions prohibit them from being able to survive unrestrained in our society?
Is hospitalization in America to continue to be a solution only for the wealthy or the dangerously insane, while many of our mentally ill citizens crowd our jails and place an unfair burden on our criminal justice system? Are families to lock their deranged loved ones away in basements and attics to prevent their being arrested for misbehaving in public? It is as though our society says, “We realize you are a paranoid schizophrenic with hallucinations and a child’s ability of reasoning, but we demand that you control yourself and act like a regular, responsible guy, or off to jail you go!” But no matter how often these “hardened criminals” are arrested for their dementia, no matter how cruelly they are treated as inmates, they yet fail to significantly modify their behavior and stay out of trouble. Why can’t they just go tuck themselves quietly away under an overpass or behind a dumpster and talk to their phantom friends and dodge laser rays from Mars? Is that too much to ask?
Please contact your congressional representative today and demand that hospitalization replace incarceration for the mentally ill people in your state. http://www.house.gov/writerep
LOOKING AHEAD
I hope that America will soon move away from its practice of imprisoning its mentally ill citizens. Let us not continue to replace psychiatrists with policemen. We must not continue to substitute long-term inpatient care and mental hospital beds with cold, iron prison racks, where sick people are offered no mattresses, no cover, and often, no clothes, lest a sick prisoner hurt himself. We must not continue answering the need for compassionate care for the mentally ill with chains, mace, Taser guns, and bullets. Mental illness is not a crime; it is a handicap. As such, we must discontinue the Dark Age practice of keeping our sick people in dungeons, particularly those Americans who have diagnosed mental impairments that make it impossible for them to comprehend and abide by the laws that rule the behavior of ordinary citizens.
The large population of mentally ill prisoners in America evidences a need for confinement and enforced treatment for many disturbed citizens. A controlled environment for the seriously disturbed among us is necessary. This is a simple fact that has never changed, although some “learned” persons deny the very existence of mental illness. Unfortunately, denying the existence of an ailment does not make it disappear. Therefore, in the absence of adequate mental hospitals, jails are used to answer the need for containment of the mentally ill who are unable to live without constraint. Sadly, many of the inpatient facilities for mentally ill Americans are dangerously substandard. However, warehousing the mentally ill in jails and withholding treatment from those too sick to acknowledge their psychosis are not humane answers to the problem. My brother’s death is a worse case scenario of what happens when mentally ill persons are jailed for their irrational public behavior. Think of the thousands of mental patients who do not die while in jail like Larry, yet are forced to endure repeated arrests, often incarcerated under harsher circumstances than other inmates.
Please contact your congressional representative today and demand that hospitalization replace incarceration for the mentally ill people in your state. http://www.house.gov/writerep
Certainly, there can be little or no savings to taxpayers in classifying people as criminals rather than mental patients. Incarceration is expensive, with each prisoner costing the state a good deal of money to house, feed, clothe (the ones who are allowed to wear clothes, that is), and process through our court system. The expense of incarceration is logically even greater for mentally ill prisoners, who typically return to jail innumerable times and require special accommodations and specially trained guards. Therefore, exactly whose interest is served by our present practice of jailing rather than hospitalizing our chronically mentally ill citizens — insurance companies? Certainly, jailing policyholders with disabilities requiring continual medical and/or psychiatric care must save insurance companies a good deal of money, but how is it cheaper for the state? I only hope that in America’s zeal to have more money to appropriate for advancing democracy abroad, we never resort to the very cheapest alternative – euthanasia. Even if hospitalization is more expensive than imprisoning these unfortunate misfits, let us immediately stop arresting people for being sick. When it comes to human rights, let us rescue our own helpless and needy first and foremost.
The Cochran Firm had on its brochure in 2003 when it tricked my mother into signing contract this quote: “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Luke 12:48. America has so much to spend defending human rights in foreign lands, including the lives of our young soldiers and billions of dollars. Yet, the condition of our mentally ill citizens, evidenced by Larry’s secret incarceration and jail death, rises to the level of cruel and unusual punishment. So, I answer to The Cochran Firm’s Bible quote with one of my own, and one that I feel should be applied by my government in its treatment of the mentally ill: “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me. Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matthew 25:40-41.
We must not allow our response to mental illness continue to be jail, commitment to substandard hospitals, homelessness, and euthanasia. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that there have been 115 suspicious deaths in Georgia’s mental hospitals within the last five years. I believe that America is better than that, and her citizens rightfully expect more for their incapacitated brethren. There are many types of brain damage, and each type renders the victim at least partially disabled and in need of a measure of care. If we do not address this problem now, what next? What will we do with our many children diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, or Downs Syndrome? What are we going to do with the soldiers who return from combat shell shocked or brain damaged due to the shock of bombs exploding near their heads? What of our elders with Alzheimer’s? Will we simply build more jails and order up more chains? Will we just starve our brain damaged citizens to death, as was done in Florida? What has happened to this “one nation under God”? See http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/stories/hiddenshame.html.
There should be a three-day limit placed on the amount of time that persons with diagnosed mental illness can remain incarcerated while awaiting trial. America should construct or reconstruct hospitals for the speedy transfer of such detainees, where they should remain under psychiatric care until making bail, standing trial, or longer, if determined necessary by their doctors. If our great country has the money to fight for humane treatment of people in other countries, let us appropriate the necessary funds to secure humane treatment for our own citizens who are mentally disabled. If this happens, then poor Larry’s isolation, suffering, and death in jail would not be in vain. Hospitalization, not incarceration or euthanasia, is needed for those sick people who cannot function outside of a controlled environment.
STAND WITH LARRY’S FAMILY AS WE SEEK FULL DISCLOSURE AND ACCOUNTABILITY REGARDING HIS DEATH AND DEMAND HUMANE TREATMENT FOR OTHER MENTALLY ILL AMERICANS. SEND A LINK OF THIS WEBSITE TO PEOPLE WHO YOU FEEL CAN HELP WITH THESE ISSUES.
PLEASE CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE TODAY AND DEMAND THAT HOSPITALIZATION REPLACE INCARCERATION FOR THE MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE IN YOUR STATE. http://www.house.gov/writerep
What caused Shelby County, Tennessee Jail to ignore missing person reports for 18 days on inmate Larry Neal, while keeping this mentally ill heart patient incarcerated until his death on August 1, 2003?
Why did Shelby County Jail repeatedly and falsely report to Larry’s family and social worker during Larry’s period “missing” that neither Larry Neal nor any unidentified detainee meeting his description was incarcerated?
Immediately after Larry’s burial, why did The Cochran Firm contract with Larry’s mother, Hattie Neal, to sue Shelby County Jail for wrongful death, when the Memphis office of The Cochran Firm was in fact managed by Julian Bolton, a 20-year member of the Shelby County Commission, which is the entity that owns and operates the jail where Larry died?
Was it to protect Shelby County Government that The Cochran Firm merely held Larry’s wrongful death case on its shelves inactive for the next 10.5 months while the Tennessee statute of limitations on personal injury ran?
Why did The Cochran Firm write letters to Larry’s mother and sister, Mary Neal, after contracting with them and lie about a vigorous investigation and legal discovery that law firm was conducting regarding Larry’s wrongful death, when the law firm was actually doing nothing to represent them?
The law office located at 127 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia is widely advertised as being the Atlanta office of The Cochran Firm. Why did this law office deny being The Cochran Firm's Atlanta office in Fulton County Superior Court when Larry's family brought suit against The Cochran Firm and served the suit to that office? If that law office is not a Cochran Firm law office, why is it allowed to be advertised as such?
The Cochran Firm’s undisclosed conflict of interest, deliberate malpractice, and fraud of its clients effectively shielded Shelby County Jail from answering any Larry’s family’s questions regarding his incarceration and death.
This website seeks to chronicle the journey of Larry Neal's family as they bring these injustices into the light of the public forum. Please read our full story, view our documentary evidence, and contact us. Larry's family counts on you to help bring justice and closure regarding his wrongful death and to help decriminalize mental illness in America. Larry's secret incarceration and death in jail demonstrate plainly that many of America's mentally ill citizens need hospitalization. Incarceration and homelessness must not continue to be our answer to mental illness.
