Editor's Note: Reporter Monica Vaughan is a 2015 fellow for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice's Center on Media, Crime and Justice and the Langeloth Foundation, covering "An Imprisoned Mind: The Mentally Ill & The Criminal Justice System." Appeal-Democrat readers can expect semi-regular stories examining the nexus of mental health and the Yuba-Sutter criminal justice system. Local residents with experience with the issues of mental health and the justice system are asked to contact her.
Rodney Bock was awaiting transfer to Napa State Hospital when he was found dead in a bloody Sutter County jail cell in 2010.
The local fruit farmer and father of four was arrested three months earlier on suspicion of making criminal threats during what his family said was a psychotic episode. He failed to appear in court when he spontaneously decided to drive to Idaho to carry out grandiose plans to take over the world "without firing a single shot," medical records say.
He was later admitted to the Sutter-Yuba Mental Health Services psychiatric facility, then transferred to the county jail.
His family watched through a jail visiting window as Bock's health declined and he became increasingly delusional. They found some relief when a judge ruled Bock wasn't able to understand the criminal charges against him or aid in his own defense and ordered that Bock be admitted to a state hospital.
Ten days later, Bock, 56, hanged himself in his single-person cell.
"It should never have happened. That wasn't the right environment for him to be in at all," his daughter, Kellie Bock, said last year.
She and her sister have joined other families across California in a civil rights lawsuit against the directors of the departments of state hospitals and developmental services "for leaving vulnerable defendants to languish in jail, denying them treatment and their right to due process," said the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
The suit was filed in Alameda County Superior Court in July by the ACLU and the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.
In Yuba-Sutter, and throughout the state, people with mental health illnesses — including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia — often wait months in county jails for transfer to a state facility that is more equipped to make assessments and provide treatment.
As of Feb. 9, there were 366 mentally incompetent defendants waiting to be admitted to state hospitals, according to the complaint. The average time for the previous 25 people admitted that same day was more than 75 days.
"Jail is a dangerous place for people with mental health issues and development disabilities, and while they wait for treatment, they're essentially stuck in a limbo," said Micaela Davis, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.
In the days leading to Bock's death, he was observed beating his head against the walls, talking to nonexistent people and refusing to take his medication.
A neighboring inmate contacted an officer on duty about Bock's outbursts.
"One officer told me over the intercom that he knew that Rodney was crazy, but that he didn't know what to do about it," Aaron Watts said in a declaration. "I told him that Rodney was acting suicidal and that they needed to check on him and get him 'out of there.'"
Jail and medical staff were ill equipped and failed to respond, the complaint says.
"Rodney Bock's case is a tragic example of why the criminal justice system and county jails are not the right place to deal with mental health issues. A short amount of time in jail for someone with mental health issues can have very serious and harmful consequences," Davis said.
Sutter County Sheriff J. Paul Parker said the wait times constitute an immense problem.
"Would you want to wait three months to see a doctor for a medical problem? This is a medical problem," he said. "These are specialist things that need to be dealt with by specialists."
At any given time, both Sutter and Yuba County jails are usually housing between two and three inmates as they await transfer, which can put the inmate and jail staff at risk, and open the county up to lawsuits.
Since Bock's death, and an $800,000 county settlement with the Bock family, Parker's officers have received training in suicide prevention. But the jail isn't and shouldn't be a mental health facility, Parker said.
"They're not mental health workers. They're correctional officers."
Mentally ill individuals need to be in an appropriate facility, he said.
"These are people that have been committed to state hospital, and yet they refuse to take them because they don't have the space," Parker said.
He blames the problem on a bi-partisan decision in the 1960s to close state hospitals, which he said shifted the care of mentally ill people to the criminal justice system.
"California used to have a lot of (state hospitals), and this was not an issue. And, as they close those down, the need for state prisons increases. It's like a see-saw," he said.
The solution is obvious, Parker said: more state hospital beds.
"We believe (lack of space) could be one of the problems," Davis said.
"The state has argued lack of capacity and they simply don't have the beds. But there are certainly things the state could be doing to free up more beds and speed up their processing."
A goal of the lawsuit it to learn what hospitals' processes are and how they can be more efficient.
The problem is not California's alone.
Mentally ill inmates are sitting in jails across the country waiting for mental health medical treatment at state facilities. Lawsuits were filed in Utah, Oregon, and most recently in Pennsylvania, alleging mentally ill defendants' constitutional rights are regularly violated.
CONTACT reporter Monica Vaughan at 749-4783 and on Twitter @MonicaLVaughan.
