on the cover / By HSU Investigative Reporting students

Nobody’s Fault

The anatomy of a suicide in the Humboldt County Jail

(May 15, 2008) In January, journalism students from HSU, as part of an investigative reporting class taught by Assistant Professor Marcy Burstiner, set out to understand the intersection of the mental health and criminal justice systems in Humboldt County by investigating the death of one man: James Lee Peters, a Hoopa resident who committed suicide in the Humboldt County Jail last August. Over three months they intended to interview people who knew him as well as people who work in mental health and criminal justice. They were met with a wall of silence: Many people did not respond to repeated requests for information. People in the mental health field who did respond said they could not discuss his case because of privacy protections required under federal law. His lawyers argued that attorney-client privilege survives the death of a client. The Hoopa community, unused to anything but negative news, did not feel comfortable talking about Peters to the press.

The mental health system in Humboldt and across the state turned out to be a labyrinth they couldn’t penetrate; instead of answering basic questions about standard procedures one agency after another bounced them from office to office. A public information officer at Atascadero State Hospital forced them to file a California Public Records Request just to find out how its trial competency program works.

GALLERY >

So the students poured through records: Court minutes and files that are open to public inspection; birth, death and autopsy reports; court transcripts, case files released from the district attorney’s office in response to another public records request and procedural reports and data from Atascadero. Their conclusion based on the records and interviews: The untimely death of James Lee Peters was both entirely preventable and inevitable. It reflected the inability of our mental health system to help people until it is too late, and the failure of the criminal justice system to handle the people who end up in the jails as a result.

The students involved in the project were: Chris Hoff, Karina Gonzalez, Matthew Barry, Matthew Hawk, Marc Kozachenko, Tatiana Cummings, Cassandra Hoisington, Melinda Spencer, Deunn Willis, Nicole Willens, Adrian Emery and Meghannraye Sutton.

James Lee Peters spent his 25th birthday last August behind the walls of the Humboldt County Jail, waiting to be taken to a state mental hospital. He spent his previous birthday much the same way. He wouldn’t live to see the next. Instead, 10 days after he turned 25, Peters took the sheet off his bed, tore it into strips, tied them together and hanged himself. He would be on life support for eight days at St. Joseph Hospital before he would die of asphyxiation.

If Peters understood what he was doing when he ended his life, it might have been the only time he fully understood his actions. Complications at birth gave him learning disabilities and a low IQ. Throughout his life he needed mental health counseling but received little. He tended to lash out when he was angry and that repeatedly put him in trouble with the law. What began as small outbursts became increasingly violent, until the criminal justice system could no longer overlook the threat he represented. Instead, as his criminal record piled up, the Humboldt County Superior Court bounced him between a variety of mental health facilities, but only to make him competent enough to stand trial.

But this story doesn’t stop with Peters. Because the tragedy is that we fill our jail, and jails across the state and country, with people just like him. There are alternatives, but not in Humboldt County.

“This community treats dogs better then the mentally ill,” said District Attorney Paul Gallegos. “My hope is that we [would] treat our mentally ill better than we treat a dog.”

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