LF: Man who was kept in Rikers Island for THREE YEARS as a teen but never charged with a crime commits suicide aged 22

Title: Man who was kept in Rikers Island for THREE YEARS as a teen but never charged with a crime commits suicide aged 22
Source: Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... hout-charged-dead-suicide.html
Published: Jun 8, 2015
Author: Pete D'amato
Post Date: 2015-06-08 07:48:25 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 1760
Comments: 4

A Bronx man who spent three years in jail as a teenager despite never being charged with a crime was found dead by suicide on Saturday, his lawyer said.

Kalief Browder, 21, had been arrested in 2010 as a 16-year-old and endured years of beatings and isolation before being released in 2013 without explanation.

It wasn't the first time Browder had tried to take his own life while struggling with the effects of his time in prison, as the New Yorker reported.

Unjust imprisonment: Kalief Browder, who was held for three years at Rikers Island without charges, was found dead by suicide Saturday

On his 634th day in jail, recently out solitary confinement, known to inmates as The Bing, Browder made a noose out of torn bedsheets and attempted to hang himself from the light fixture.

After being taken to the infirmary, he was placed in solitary confinement once again.

Even after he got out of Rikers after charges against him had been dropped, Browder harbored an intense feeling of paranoia and had antipsychotics prescribed for him.

Six months from his release, he took a steak knife with him to the bedroom, which a visiting friend managed to snatch away, before trying to hang himself from a banister.

Browder's emotional had seemed to be improving recently, those close to him said. After struggling at Bronx Community College and dropping out, an anonymous donor offered to pay a semester's tuition and he returned to school happier, earning better grades than before.

He met Jay-Z after the rapper saw the videos obtained by the New Yorker. Rosie O'Donnell had him on the View and later invited him to dinner at her home.

On Monday, Prestia noticed a few strange posts on Browder's Facebook and texted him to ask if everything was alright. 'Yea I’m alright thanks man,' was the reply.

Browder disappeared into Rikers Island back in 2010 after being picked up for allegedly stealing a backpack that owner Roberto Bautista claimed had his credit card, debit card, digital camera, iPod and hundreds of dollars in cash inside.

He told his court-appointed lawyer he refused to accept a plea deal for the charge and wanted the case to go to trial.

Troubled: In spite of antipsychotic medication and support from family, Browder suffered paranoia from physical and psychological abuse suffered at Rikers

His assertion of innocence would cost him more than a thousand days in Rikers, where he claimed guards beat inmates and threatened those who would report the abuse with time in solitary.

The New York Times reported as of March more than 400 people were in prison for two years or longer without having been charged with a crime.

Though Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to have the courts, prisons and prosecutors work to reduce the inmate population by decreasing delays, there are reports life on the inside is as brutal as it was for Browder.

One night early in Browder's time at the jail, guards lined up Browder with a group of other young inmates, punching each one as they questioned them about a fight that occurred earlier.

After they bloodied noses and eyes were beginning to swell shut, guards offered the inmates a choice - go get treatment at the infirmary or go back to their beds, stressing if the inmates told medical staff about the beatings, they would be punished in solitary, Browder claimed.

Browder claimed he was starved while in solitary as well, with guards withholding up to four consecutive meals. When he was fed, it often wasn't enough to sustain a teenager, and he tried to beg guards for extra slices of bread.

In a video obtained by the New Yorker of another incident of abuse, Browder is seen being led out of the Bing before a guard slams him into the ground.

For being 'involved in a use of force,' as the Department of Corrections injury to inmate report described it, Browder, not the guard, was punished, being placed back in solitary.

'After that happened,' Browder said then, 'I was scared to come out of my cell to get in the shower again, because I felt, if I come out of my cell and he slams me again, then I’m going to get more box days.'

Someone correct me I am wrong,but isn't there something about a guarantee of a speedy trial in the Bill of Rights?