The sad case of Janice Dotson-Stephens

by Jay H. Krulewitch

This article originally appeared in the January 2019 issue of Trial News, the monthly publication of the Washington State Association for Justice.

America is the one rich country with the biggest slums, the least democratic and least developed health system, and the most niggardly attitude against its old people. — Gunnar Myrdal

When old people speak it is not becaues of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see. — Cinua Achebe

Old age is like climbing a mountain. You climb from ledge to ledge. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your views become more extensive. — Ingmar Bergman

When I think of the kinds of cases that personal injury attorneys handle with respect to the elderly, they run the gamut, from nursing home abuse cases, to elder abuse cases, to almost any kind of situation. In each one of them, we are seeking to do justice. But then, the other day, a case involving a mother and grandmother simply broke my heart. It was a different kind of case, the kind of case that I was shocked to hear about in America in 2018. Dean Malone, an attorney in Dallas, Texas, and a member of the National Police Accountability Project, was kind enough to post a notice of her death’s sad story on the NPAP email list of which I am a member. Dean’s posting summed up the tragic passing of Ms. Dotson-Stephens as “Inexcusable” and he was right to say so.

As a criminal defense and a civil rights attorney, I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Janice Dotson-Stephens. I was touched by her story and dug a bit further to learn that Ms. Dotson-Stephens tragically passed away while sitting in the Bexar County Jail. She was an elderly African-American woman, a mother and grandmother, who suffered from mental illness, and was being held as a first-time offender on a charge of criminal trespass, a minor misdemeanor charge. Her bail had been set at $300, which means if her family had posted a typical bond for her, she could have been released from jail for ten per cent (10%) of the bail or $30! She had been held in the Bexar County Jail since July 2018 — almost six months! See Matthew Martiniz, “61 Year Old Woman Dies in Texas Jail Because She Couldn’t Afford $300 Bond, Records Say”, The State, December 18, 2018 (https://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article223259365.html?fbclid=IwAR3STQEFGZtRmGDqfQePomVjIudLBZdrw6hvKxMQ5LS00uxSNpT_IQ-2vE).

What made this story even more tragic is that her family had no idea she was sitting in the Bexar County Jail! Her daughter-in-law, Letitia Dotson, and her husband, Ms. Dotson-Stephens’s son, thought she was receiving mental health treatment in a state hospital. They had no idea that she was languishing away in a local jail. Had she known, Ms. Dotson said she would have taken steps to post her bail and obtain her release. Further, Ms. Dotson-Stephens was in a completely foreign environment — she was unable to cope and/or fend for herself, especially in view of the fact that she suffered from mental illness. The system which incarcerated her also failed her in her time of need. Amazingly, no one in the jail or court system appears to have made any effort to track down and notify this person’s family that she was incarcerated. She died a lonely, tragic, needless death, of cardiovascular complications, while sitting in the Bexar County Jail.

To put things in perspective, San Antonio is a large metropolitan area. It has over 1.5 million people, comparable in size to Dallas, Texas. In 2017, the Bexar County Jail was exploding and overpopulated with an estimated 4,483 inmates sitting in the jail as of July 2017. It has had a problem with overcrowding, not unlike other jails in major metropolitan areas around the country, with a large part of the increase in its population occurring due to the incarceration of homeless people. Seattle is not immune from such problems. According to the 2018 Scorecard for the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, the King County Jail has had an average daily population of 1,967 persons in its custody with average monthly bookings of 3,024 persons. See DAJD Statistics (https://kingcounty.gov/depts/jails/about/dajd-stats.aspx).

In dealing with the overcrowding issue in the King County Jail, in or around 2002, a group of about 35 local municipalities, in conjunction with King County, contracted to have their prisoners transferred and housed at the Yakima Jail. King County actually paid for additional bed space to house these prisoners. But, not long after, the same problems with overcrowding and violence from fights occurring between inmates cropped up. See Roger Smith, “Washington Prisoners Suffer From Overcrowding, Abusive Guards, Inadequate Healthcare and Indifferent Politicians,” Prison Legal News, May 2008. In addition, this move to ship inmates across the state to another locale spawned a number of other issues. Inmates became separated from loved ones as well as their attorneys, which increased their sense of isolation.

Coming back to the sad story of Janice Dotson-Stephens, it would be a mistake to assume that this could never happen in Seattle-King County. Too often, the mentally ill and the homeless are being warehoused in the King County Jail. Alternative services for these populations have gone wanting and have yet to be properly and appropriately funded and addressed. Certainly, if there is anything positive to come from the tragic death of Janice Dotson-Stephens, it ought to be how we treat the mentally ill and how to keep them from “getting lost in the shuffle,” how we find ways to keep them out of jails entirely, where they can get the services they most desperately need.

It has often been said that the mark of an advanced civilization is how that society treats its most unfortunate, its most dispossessed, its downtrodden. If there is any truth to that standard, we have yet to come close to this standard in 2018. We need to take steps to make sure that Janice Dotson-Stephens did not die in vain, that county jail services which attend to the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, and other groups in need are not only staffed with well-trained professionals, but that systems in our jails have been put in place to make sure people like Ms. Dotson-Stephens do not fall through the cracks and are not forgotten about. Everyone is part of our community. Each person incarcerated is a human being who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. They are part of our community. We have a duty to help treat those persons who are less fortunate, less able to care for themselves, less able to fend for themselves, to make sure they receive the services they need, that they are not forgotten, especially when it comes to those elderly folks who are mentally ill and incarcerated for a minor criminal offense.

Jay Krulewitch, EAGLE Member, practices personal injury, civil rights, and criminal defense in Lake City, Seattle. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Trial News.