While the City Slept (15 page)

Competency restoration is simply what it says, the restoration of a person’s ability to meet the minimum legal standard of competency. That
is, the ability to understand the charges against oneself and assist one’s attorney. This, as Judge Gain suggested in his letter, is one of the many problems with handling complex psychological challenges through the court system. The court system doesn’t have the time, or the mandate, to make more than a narrowly targeted effort. The focus is on preparing a defendant for questions of guilt and punishment, not on preparing a troubled person for recovery and, perhaps, integration back into society.

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The major vehicle Western State used for achieving competency with Isaiah was forced medications, first the antipsychotic Zyprexa, then the mood stabilizer lithium. He had been quite angry when he returned to the facility from court, glaring at the doctor who greeted him. “His speech was rapid and he was difficult to interrupt at times,” the report on his competency restoration noted. “Some grandiosity was apparent.” He described his suicide attempt as a “plea for help” but didn’t want to talk much more about it, saying it was “a moment of weakness that I would rather not dwell on.” He complained he was being treated poorly, “demanded rule books so that he could see what the rules were and where they were written,” described his public defender as “not on my side,” and spoke about his ability to think rationally as a “super power considering the world we live in where nobody thinks rationally and logically.”

Zyprexa, the Western State report explained, is “an antipsychotic also sometimes used to treat acute mania.” During the two days after it was prescribed for Isaiah, he got in fights with other inmates and had to be sent to the hospital for his injuries. Eventually, he was tapered off the Zyprexa and put on lithium, which doctors thought improved his mood somewhat. His speech slowed down. He was less impulsive. The mania seemed to be gone, but the grandiose thinking lingered, and the denial of any mental disorder was still present. “Overall,” Western State reported, “he appeared more emotionally stable.”

Again, Isaiah was diagnosed as bipolar, this time with the notation of some “possible Narcissistic traits, including an apparent sense of entitlement, arrogant behavior, and grandiose sense of self-importance.” He also was described as “a relatively intelligent individual with no obvious intellectual or cognitive defects” who now, in the opinion of Dr. Kramer, met the minimum legal standard for competency. The date of his opinion: July 11, 2008. Isaiah was now a few weeks shy of his twenty-third birthday.

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On August 6, competency restored, Isaiah was back before Judge Gain. His bearing was different from before, more slouched than coiled, his face slack. The joker-like grin was nowhere to be seen. Asked by Judge Gain about his mental health, Isaiah replied, “I am calm.” His speech was also different from that in his earlier appearance, more molasses than geyser, his tone more remote. “I’m fine,” Isaiah continued. “Competent.” Asked by the judge whether the medication was helping, he replied, “Uh, yes.”

Isaiah’s lawyer, Mary Ellen Ramey, pronounced a “total turnaround” and urged Judge Gain to release Isaiah to his aunt, Rachel Kalebu, pending trial, “with any conditions that the court would impose.”

The prosecutor immediately pointed out the weakness in this plan. It was a family member’s demand that Isaiah take medication, the prosecutor reminded the court, that led to Isaiah’s being arrested and brought before Judge Gain in the first place. If Judge Gain were to release Isaiah, the prosecutor recommended strict conditions.

Judge Gain essentially agreed with this assessment. Isaiah would be released on the condition that he have no alcohol or illegal drugs, possess no dangerous weapons, have no contact with his mother or Deborah, establish care with a community health center, attend all appointments, take all medications as instructed, and provide his medical records to the court so that Judge Gain could monitor his treatment if need be. “I don’t want to be back in a circumstance where he’s not taking his medication,” Judge Gain said, perhaps recalling a warning in Dr. Kramer’s report. It
called Isaiah “an above average long-term risk for future danger to others” and said his competency would warrant reevaluation “should he stop taking his medication and decompensate.”

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On August 21, 2008, after a successful one-day visit with his aunt, Isaiah was set free on his own recognizance. It was now a few weeks after his twenty-third birthday. In the span of four months, he had run a route that is typical in a system that routinely fails people like him, a route that led from his mother’s care to the police, from the police to the emergency room at Harborview, from the Harborview emergency room back to his mother’s care, from his mother’s care back to the police, and, finally, from the police to jail. Once in jail, Isaiah had been sent to the courtroom of Judge Brian Gain, from Judge Gain’s courtroom to Western State Hospital, from Western State Hospital back to Judge Gain with a finding of competency, and then, with certain conditions, back into the community. This is not the community treatment apparatus that President Kennedy envisioned when he signed the Community Mental Health Act in 1963. It was now the fall of 2008. Teresa and Jennifer had been engaged for two
months.

W
hat Isaiah still didn’t have was a relationship with someone who had time to hear his whole story, someone who could sit alongside the young man, talk with him, look with him into his experience, its beginnings, its possibilities. Instead, he continued to be seen in pieces. That is, whatever piece of him seemed most pressing to whatever particular authorities had to deal with him at a given moment. “They only see a section of the elephant,” Dr. Lymberis said. “So, to one person it looks like a snake. To another person, it looks like—I don’t know—a tiger or whatever, and it’s because the picture they have is very limited. But if you put the whole thing together, that is when the whole thing comes to life.” Isaiah also didn’t have a clear recognition that he needed help, which made things more complicated. Western State called his insight into his mental disorder “limited” and had cautioned in its final report to Judge Gain that Isaiah’s ability to be compliant with medications was unknown, because he’d never once taken them without being forced. But the prospect of his establishing a relationship with a community treatment provider did offer some hope. Maybe it would be an opportunity for a more comprehensive encounter.

“In the treatment of people with severe chronic mental illness,” Dr. Lymberis wrote later, “medication is necessary, often life-saving, but it does not result in meaningful adaptational change unless it is linked to effective and meaningful psychotherapy.” Theoretically, this possibility, or something like it, now awaited Isaiah.

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Theoretically. In actuality, community treatment clinics like the one Isaiah established care with are chronically underfunded and overworked, with treatment providers paid significantly lower salaries than providers in the private sector, who generally see people with health insurance or the ability to pay out of pocket. The name of Isaiah’s publicly funded provider: Cascade Mental Health Care. There, initial intake paperwork noted Isaiah as depressed, socially isolated, and suffering from mood swings, irritability, anxiety, aggression, grief, and emotional trauma. He was given a prescription for Zyprexa and lithium, the same medications he’d been prescribed at Western State. When Isaiah showed up for his first session, on September 11, 2008, he was back to denying any mental disturbance whatsoever. He said he wasn’t depressed, anxious, or experiencing any sort of psychosis. He was noted to be angry and gave “testy, short, and curt answers.” He also expressed displeasure at having to be involved in community treatment at all. He had been free on his own recognizance for exactly three weeks.

Isaiah’s blood could have been tested to see whether he was taking his lithium as prescribed. It wasn’t. Instead, a blood draw was ordered for Isaiah’s next visit, set for early October. Isaiah didn’t show for that visit. Nor did he appear for his scheduled visits in November or December. By the beginning of 2009, nine months before Teresa and Jennifer’s wedding date, Isaiah had spent more than three months out of compliance with Judge Gain’s order that he attend all of his Cascade Mental Health Care appointments. “Neither the provider nor his aunt informed the court,” Isaiah’s public defenders wrote years later. “Nor did the court seek verification of Isaiah’s mental health medication and treatment compliance.” Such lack of communication and oversight is not unusual, given the demands on the mental health and criminal justice systems and the limited resources they are provided. In this case, the lack of communication and oversight continued for a total of eleven months. It went on, Isaiah’s
lawyers later wrote, “even though Isaiah had fourteen scheduled court hearings during that period.”

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During this same period, the Washington State Legislature was struggling with a $9 billion shortfall caused by the financial crisis, which had now become the Great Recession. In an echo of the national mood, voters in Washington State opposed increasing taxes. At the same time, they demanded more effective government services. Similarly, major businesses in the state wanted tax breaks and were embracing tax dodges while at the same time demanding a better-educated workforce and massive improvements to the transportation infrastructure. To meet these contradictory demands, Washington State’s elected leaders, like many others around the country, began cutting their state’s own safety net, including mental health funding. Simultaneously, the federal government’s spending for mental health declined. As a result, over the two-year budgeting cycle that began in 2009, funding for mental health services in Washington State dropped by $24 million, and sixty more beds were lost at Western State Hospital. This phenomenon was repeated all around the nation, to the point that the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in a 2009 report, described a system “in crisis” that was creating “a vicious cycle that destroys lives, and creates more significant financial troubles for states and the federal government in the long-run.”

Due to what the report described as “our country’s utter neglect of its most vulnerable citizens,” the United States again received a D grade for its mental health services. “The lack of improvement over time brings into sharp relief our complete failure to take charge of an ineffective system and begin to transform it,” the report stated. “It need not be this way.”

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It continued this way. Isaiah did show up for an appointment on January 7, 2009, at Cascade Mental Health Care, but on that day he was angry, argued
with his treatment provider, expressed displeasure with his medication, and tried to negotiate some other alternative. He particularly didn’t like taking Zyprexa. “The clinician, hoping to ‘prevent him’ from stopping his medication, agreed to lower the dose without having checked any blood levels,” Dr. Lymberis wrote. The same clinician noted that Isaiah going off his meds “would be a disaster.”

Isaiah never returned to Cascade Mental Health Care. “Very little is known about Isaiah’s activities between January 2009 to late June 2009,” his public defenders later wrote. He was barred by court order from contact with his mother and Deborah. He was out of work. He was living with his aunt, but, Dr. Lymberis wrote, “during that time he was isolated, only taking walks with his dog every day.”

Beyond his aunt, his family feared him. “His personhood and humanity were lost to the illness,” Dr. Lymberis wrote. “Isaiah became his illness.” On top of this, restraining orders against him by his mother and sister, she wrote, “were experienced by him, in his damaged state, as worse than abandonment.”

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He could still pull it together, though. Could still, at times, do what his father had taught him: tough it out. On April 24, 2009, Isaiah appeared in court for a pretrial hearing in the case revolving around his alleged threats and violence against his mother and sister. His hair was cut in a short, tight Afro, and he was wearing a brown leather jacket over a gray dress shirt. His demeanor was tense but controlled. With Mary Ellen Ramey standing next to him, he pleaded guilty to the harassment and malicious mischief charges. Then, when told he would have to provide a DNA sample as part of his plea, he withdrew the plea and asked for a new lawyer. A trial was now inevitable.

Two months later, Isaiah’s aunt picked up the phone at her house in Stonewood, a suburban development shaded by evergreen trees just south
of Tacoma. Signs at the development’s entrance feature a twisting river carved in wood and painted in light browns. She called the local human services department and reported that Isaiah was off his medications, that he was showing symptoms of his mental disorder. When human services staff arrived, they observed Isaiah to have “very controlled, pressured speech, and an intense stare.” He denied he had any psychological disturbance, telling them it was his aunt who was delusional. Isaiah’s tendency to turn things around, and to blame the women who were sheltering him, was still present.

Court documents state that human services “was unable to determine any grounds for detention of Isaiah.” The department wouldn’t comment on the case, citing medical privacy rules, but presumably Isaiah was again ruled not a danger to himself or others because the next day he was out with his dog, roaming a park near his aunt’s house.

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Cirque Park is mostly flat and wide open, holding ball fields, a skate park, an off-leash area for dogs, and, in one corner, a wooded hill with gravel trails. In an area of the park that requires dogs to be on leashes, Isaiah was seen flouting the rule in an inventive manner. He had attached a leash to Indo, but then he’d let go of the leash so the pit bull could wander about freely, dragging the leash behind him. When an animal-control officer told Isaiah to hold on to the leash, Isaiah “flipped him off and then made sexual and derogatory remarks and started to approach him,” according to court records. Isaiah then “started to follow him around the parking lot and only stopped when police arrived.”

The police officers found an upset Isaiah, who had “the large pit bull in one hand and a golf club in the other.” It was a Wilson 3 iron, a type of club that J. J. Jones, Rachel Kalebu’s roommate and an avid golfer, kept around the house. The police had with them Tasers and nonlethal beanbag guns, tools that departments have been buying and deploying with
increasing frequency as they confront disturbed individuals who need restraint and psychiatric help rather than lethal force. The officers told Isaiah to put the golf club down. Isaiah did. They asked him why he was harassing the animal-control officer. Isaiah said it was an expression of free speech.

They asked Isaiah for identification. Isaiah refused. They threatened Isaiah with arrest. Go ahead, he told them.

The officers told Isaiah to place his hands behind his back and let go of the dog. Isaiah refused. They warned him to comply or be tasered. Isaiah refused to comply.

“Tasers were deployed,” the police report states, “but not effectively.” Isaiah picked up the golf club. Indo became agitated. The officers then shot Isaiah with nonlethal beanbag rounds, tasered him again, took him into custody, and charged him with obstructing law enforcement and resisting arrest.

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The following day—Tuesday, June 30, 2009—Isaiah appeared in the courtroom of the Pierce County District Court judge Pat O’Malley. During the weekend that had just passed, Gay Pride weekend in Seattle, Teresa and Jennifer had gone out shopping and returned with Teresa’s $70 wedding dress and those pearl earrings.

Judge O’Malley is a genial, soft-spoken man who, like Judge Gain, has seen the law, and the force it wields, from a number of sides. Born in Minneapolis, he attended college at the University of Minnesota and then enlisted in the navy, where he served as an officer for three years. “I was in firefights,” Judge O’Malley said. “And there’s some things that are just plain unavoidable. That just happen. When your number’s up, it’s up. So. Do you try to prevent that? Absolutely.” The cruelty and capriciousness of life must be tempered by justice. After leaving the navy, he went to law school at Gonzaga University in eastern Washington and then worked as a public defender, a labor lawyer, an elected Port of Tacoma commissioner,
and a county council member. In 2002, he was elected a Pierce County District Court judge with 54 percent of the vote. In the years after, he never faced a challenger.

About eighty cases a day move through Judge O’Malley’s courtroom, roughly ten an hour. “Hello,” he said as he opened court on this day, audio of the proceedings digitally recorded. “Have a seat, everybody. Where would we like to begin? Let’s see. How many do we have in the jail, total? A lot? Okay. Let’s start with one in the jail . . .”

A Mr. Booker appeared, charged with driving while his license was suspended. He pleaded not guilty and was released pending further hearings. A Mr. Owen appeared, charged with vehicle prowling. He’d missed a recent hearing because of the flu, he said. “Remember what we talked about, about who you hang around with,” Judge O’Malley told Mr. Owen before encouraging him to keep up with classes he was taking at a technical college. A Mr. Zalzibar appeared, having been picked up on a very old charge of driving while under the influence. Judge O’Malley said a few words to Mr. Zalzibar in Spanish, leaving the rest up to an interpreter, and then released Mr. Zalzibar, finding that the day the man had just spent in jail was enough punishment for such an old offense and good behavior since. About forty minutes and five other cases later, Isaiah’s name and case number were called. Someone whispered to Judge O’Malley, “His aunt’s in the courtroom.”

“Oh,” Judge O’Malley said. “Mr. Kalebu, your aunt’s in the courtroom. How about if you move up one pew?”

“I can see her,” Isaiah said.

“Oh, you can see her? Great. Well, she’s been here for quite a while. I’d say at least an hour. So, pretty nice of her to come. Thank her when you get out, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

The charges against Isaiah were announced: obstruction and resisting arrest. Isaiah, through his public defender, pleaded not guilty. No mention was made of the unmedicated context in which the charges arose.

“Okay, thank you,” Judge O’Malley said. “I’m just reading the declaration now.”

Judge O’Malley read the declaration of probable cause, which outlined Isaiah’s standoff with the police in the park. A few seconds in, he sighed audibly in an otherwise silent courtroom. About forty-five seconds in, he issued a concerned “Hm” and kept going, the courtroom still silent, waiting. “Wow,” Judge O’Malley said after about a minute. “Well, I’ll find probable cause. Fortunate something really bad didn’t happen that day. Ugh. So. Conditions?”

Judge O’Malley wanted to know what conditions the prosecutor would like imposed should the judge decide to release Isaiah until his next hearing. The prosecutor asked for $1,000 bail and noted that Isaiah had an open matter in King County (the case in Judge Gain’s court) as well as a bit of a warrant history (connected to the misdemeanor theft and marijuana possession charges from a few years back).

“Well, it doesn’t look like there are any—or maybe there are. What’s the F-column mean again?” Judge O’Malley was struggling with the antiquated patchwork of computer systems still used by all trial courts in Washington State. Judges have been asking for improvements to these systems for more than a decade. Meanwhile, the state that birthed Microsoft and later, at Microsoft’s urging, allowed the company billions of dollars in tax breaks has struggled to find the money to upgrade its trial courts’ case management software.