9 Likes
And lack of resources. Apparently many of the guards watching the guy including during the suicide watch weren’t guards. They had janitors and nurses from unrelated units filling in on short notice due to staff shortages.
And then just callousness. Apparently his own lawyers requested he be taken off suicide watch. Your own client attempted suicide and your response is to get him sent back to the place where he attempted suicide.
3 Likes
His own lawyers have a huge financial incentive in keeping him alive, though. I dont think they can “afford” to be callous. Probably more incompetence (white collar version). Perhaps they didn’t understand the seriousness of his first attempt? Perhaps, they thought they were helping their client by removing the indignity of being “on suicide watch”?
2 Likes
His lawyers were bound to represent his interests, not their own.
It seems like it could be a breach of legal ethics for his own counsel to keep him on suicide watch against his wishes just to ensure that he’d be around to pay his legal bills.
5 Likes
Suicide watch is not exactly a comfortable thing as we’re rather regularly hearing the last few days. Some one described the suicide ward at the MCC in Manhattan to me as “a rubber room, and they throw you in naked. There’s nothing to kill yourself with, not even a bucket to shit in”. Its apparently normal for inmates to insist on being removed from suicide watch, but its not all that normal for that to happen because its suicide watch. And where you do try to get some one out of there it would seem like a better idea to try and get them transferred to a proper psych ward rather than just have the suicide watch lifted.
No one seems to have really believed the initial suicide attempt. There was speculation including among prosecutors that it was staged to effect release, and the official statements indicated they weren’t even sure if it was a suicide attempt or it was an attack by another prisoner.
So it seems like maybe no one, even Epstein’s lawyers, were taking it seriously. And when Epstein told his lawyers to get him off suicide watch, they did what the client told them. Cause:
3 Likes
Honestly, I think having a conspiracy theory about Epstein’s death is completely legitimate under the circumstances.
That said, I suspect the most likely explanation is Epstein killed himself and the guards were either encouraged or paid to turn a blind eye to what was happening in Epstein’s cell.
1 Like
His lawyer requested that he be taken off suicide watch. He got his wish and then did it.
If someone wants to off themselves, they will find a way eventually.
3 Likes
Like others have expressed, it seems like a strawman to say that anyone that thinks this death is suspicious thinks it’s because prisons aren’t horrible to people. Jeffrey Epstein ain’t people, that’s where the conspiracy comes in. We’re surprised HE was treated this way. We know wealthy, connected white men go to cushy white-collar prisons all the time, even for horribpy corrupt and destructive crimes and are treated far better than a pot street dealer.
Although when public pressure heats up so much that someone as craven and corrupt as Donald Trump fires the guy who gave you a sweetheart deal, I guess you do see all the connections you had dissolving before your eyes. Maybe getting thw opportunity to kill himself was Epstein’s last check he could cash on his rapidly draining privilege account.
4 Likes
Heinlein’s Law in addition to Occam’s Razor.
2 Likes
My position thus far is:
- It would be naive to assume that Epstein’s death could not have been the result of a conspiracy.
- It would be naive to assume that Epstein’s death must have been the result of a conspiracy.
So theorize away! But if you happen to be a President who has some of the world’s biggest investigatorial bodies at his fingertips, maybe ask them to look into it before spending the day Tweeting completely baseless conspiracy theories implicating your former political adversaries.
8 Likes
OP is addressing murder, plain and simple. The only “absolute” I can offer from my time in prison, is that “money on the outside = anything can happen on the inside”.
1 Like
If I was afraid of being murdered, I wouldn’t request to be taken off of suicide watch.
On the first attempt, his cell mate supposedly is the one who noticed and called for help. And logically, if they were going to murder him, they wouldn’t half murder him and let him live to tell about it. The fact that he survived the first incident leads me to believe that he really was the culprit and passed out mid process.
He kept diaries, had tons of pics, and his accomplices are still around. Hopefully the truth comes out and all of his predator clients get exposed and his assets go to his victims.
1 Like
Because my mind briefly went there, and others might be tempted by suicide
It would be good if this could be linked to every time suicide is discussed because it does trigger suicidal thoughts, even when the discussion involves someone like Epstein.
17 Likes
Ssshhh. You think the dark forces who have the power to kill a rich man in jail are going to let you, random person on the internet who nobody would miss, get away with exposing their conspiracies? What is that you say? That nobody would be stupid enough to believe you actually know more than anyone else? Oh okay. Continue the circus.
1 Like
Good on you for acknowledging that you haven’t read the whole article. I would suggest you do (OTOH, if you have any illusions about whether prisoners are treated with even minimum standards of human decency which you would like to keep, maybe don’t.)
You’re right that the examples Cory chose to quote showcase active malice rather than neglect and incompetence but the article has plenty of those as well.
However, they all provide excellent examples of the overall point which is that the prison system not only does not care about keeping inmates safe and alive, it often actively seeks to harm them.
6 Likes
If I may quote from the article?
Andrew Holland died in a restraint chair in San Luis Obispo County, California. He was strapped to the chair, naked, for two days. If you like, you can watch video of the guards laughing as medics try fruitlessly to perform CPR, though I would not recommend it.
Christopher Lopez was in jail in Pueblo, Colorado. He had seizures. The guards thought it was funny; you can hear them laughing and joking in the video as he dies. “I can see you breathing,” one of them says. She was mistaken; Lopez was already dead.’
Bryan Perry had a Purple Heart from his service in Iraq. He survived the war, but he didn’t survive the jail in Clackamas County, Oregon. His jailers laughed and joked as he died of a drug overdose, and took cellphone video. “We should go show this to his girlfriend and be like, ‘You love this?’” one of them says.
Joseph Arquillo died of an overdose in the Cuyahoga County Jail in Ohio. On video, you can see him lying still on a mat for about an hour. A guard checked on him by walking up and kicking his mat, and then walked away. That didn’t work. He died.
I’ll stop now. It’s too depressing.
6 Likes
If the staffing is inadequate (which by official records seems to be the case here) a 30 minute window is plenty of time to damage one’s self (although now it seems he had a 3 hour window with sleeping guards). If the surveillance infrastructure is such that even a single guard had access to live-streaming video of every person on suicide watch, they can prevent it from happening.
That said, it boggles my mind why this guy was even taken off of suicide watch (insert conspiracy theory here).
3 Likes
The problem is that even when guards see people attempting suicide or otherwise in danger of death and could step in, they often don’t.
And more importantly, there are no meaningful consequences to the system as a whole if they don’t.
Sure, the odd guard may get sanctioned or even fired (although as the article points out they far too often don’t) but the overall culture and system does not change.
6 Likes
Do unto others before they do unto you?
1 Like
I’ve seen understaffing cited as a contributing factor a few times here. That only makes sense because of the for-profit prison industry. Pack in as many billable criminals as possible, then cut the paid staff to save costs.
Not enough prisoners? Just use a share of profits to lobby for the bar to be lowered.
3 Likes
