"" Getting Justice for My Son, Timothy Joe Souders " Telling the world How Life's Healing Choice's and Celebrate Recovery saved me, in my darkest Hour"
Adrian, MI, USA
female, age 43
committed relationship, 3 children
Speaks: English
Joined Sep 2, 2006
...remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Hebrews 13:3
Remembering Timothy: STOP TORTURE
Editorial Blog: Jeff Gerritt Posted November 10, 2009 - 6:39 p.m.
A story that shouldn't die
It’s a story Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan Department of Corrections would like to go away, but it won’t. Nor should it.
Theresa Vaughn, the mother of Timothy Joe Souders, told me today that 60 Minutes would broadcast another segment on her son’s death, inside a state prison in Jackson, on WE tv on Wednesday, Dec. 2, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Souders, as I reported in August 2006, died from heat and thirst, after spending most of his last four days strapped down in a hot isolation cell, naked and soaked in his own urine.
His mother found out how he died by reading my story in the Free Press. A few months later, his death was the subject of a "60 Minutes" edition.
The state eventually settled a federal lawsuit in the case for $3.25 million.
Souders’ case was the worst I saw in a year of reporting on prison health care in Michigan.
A 21-year-old mentally ill inmate serving 1-4 years for petty theft and resisting arrest, Souders shouldn’t have been in prison. It turned into a barbaric death sentence.
Vaughn, a former factory worker, has become an activist, working with, and contributing to, prisoner advocacy groups like Prison Legal Services of Michigan, the American Friends Service Committee and Humanity for Prisoners. She plans to testify Thursday in Lansing before a House subcommittee on mental health.
Souders’ death helped change the system — but how much?
The state conducted an independent review and eventually fired its medical services provider, CMS. It created a new health care administrator position and revamped the system that provides health care to Michigan’s nearly 50,000 inmates.
Still, Vaughn, who hears frequently from the relatives of prisoners about health care abuses, as do I, says little has changed. “It’s just kept quieter,’’ she told me. “They’ve closed Jackson and the federal monitor is not there. As long as(Michigan Department of Corrections Director) Patricia Caruso is in charge, I don’t think it will move in a forward direction.’’
Prisons are a semi-secret world, ruled by a sometimes unyielding bureaucracy. No one knows the whole truth. At the very least, troubling questions remain about the quality of health care and mental health care in Michigan’s 36 prisons. The system still needs independent oversight. If you’ve forgotten how bad things can get, watch the 60 Minutes broadcast next month, on the " WE " Network.
Mental Patient Dies in Prison Wednesday, December 2 at 8pm | 7c
"Insanity on Death Row" - a report on the case of convicted killer Greg Thompson, who was originally found competent enough to stand trial for the murder of Brenda Lane. Prison doctors diagnosed him as schizophrenic and psychotic and he has been medicated by the state for most of his 22 twenty-two years on death row. Thompson’s attorneys, Dana Chavis and Steve Kissinger, are appealing his case on the basis that he was mentally ill at the time of the crime and by law, should not be executed.
"The Death of Timothy Souders" - an investigation into the death of a mental patient who died in a Michigan prison, in solitary, of dehydration. Includes interviews with Souders’ mother, Theresa Vaughn; clinical psychologist Robert Walsh; and Patricia Caruso, director of Michigan’s prison system.
"Doctor’s Dilemma" - Paranoid schizophrenic Claude Maturana is in a mental hospital, sentenced to death in 1990 for the murder of a 16 year old boy (Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that inmates cannot be put to death if they are incompetent -- so mentally ill that they don't understand the crime they committed and the punishment they face). The prosecutors mandated that his psychiatrist give him enough medication to make him competent in order to legally execute him. The doctor refused, because it violates the AMA code of ethics, so they searched the country to find someone who would. Interviews with the court-appointed lawyer handling his appeal, the psychiatrist who refused to medicate him, and former Arizona Assistant Attorney General, who claims that criminals might be feigning symptoms. (Update – he died during surgery in custody in December 2002)
Upcoming Air Dates:Wednesday, December 2 at 8pm | 7c Wednesday, December 2 at 11pm | 10c
STOP Punitive RESTRAINT USE,
STOP Punitive SEGREGATION " Stop Torture "
If each man or woman could understand that every other human life ....
.... is as full of sorrows,
..... or joys,
...... or base temptations,
...... of heartaches,
...... and of remorse as his own, ........ how much kinder,
how much gentler he would be.
IF… parents had to give up custody of their children for them to receive treatment for cancer...If people with heart disease ended up on the streets or in prisons because they couldn't get help...If businesses lost billions of dollars due to avian flu...If 30,000 people died each year due to airplane accidents...
This nation would demand action. When it comes to mental health disorders, there are no "ifs." Loss of child custody, homelessness, incarceration, lost productivity, and an epidemic of suicide are realities in communities across the country. Mental health is fundamental to overall health and research confirms the link between mind and body and demonstrates that mental illnesses are treatable when individuals have access to appropriate services.
Over 3,000 individuals and 200 organizations have already called for action by signing onto Mental Health America’s national petition drive. This petition was successfully submitted.
We can make a Difference. God Bless,
Our Wish For You:
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you will live deep in your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people and the earth, so that you will work for justice, equity and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer so you will reach out your hands to comfort them and change their pain to joy.
And may God bless you with the foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so that you will do the things others say cannot be done.
When tomorrow starts without me,
and I'm not there to see, If the sun should rise and find your eyes all filled with tears for me;
I wish so much you wouldn't cry the way you did that day, when you found out, that they let me Die
I know how much you love me Mom, as much as I love you, And each time that you think of me, Timmy Joe
I know you'll miss me too;
But when tomorrow starts without me,
Please try to understand, that an angel came and called my name And took me by the hand
Seeing Light in the Tunnel, Matthew 5:4-6... Thank you Jesus for "Life's Healing Choices" and "Celebrate Recovery", and and my favorite book since my 20's "The POWER of a Prayer women"
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