What Do We Do About Tyler?

[ThatOwlWoman]

On Nov. 17, 2012, Tyler Haire was arrested in Vardaman, Mississippi, for attacking his father’s girlfriend with a knife. Tyler, 16, had called 911 himself, and when they arrived, the local police found him seated quietly on a tree stump outside the home on County Road 433. The boy alternately said he could remember nothing and that they had the wrong man.

Tyler was taken to the county jail in Pittsboro, 12 miles away, where the sheriff, worried that the awkward and overweight boy might hurt himself or be targeted by other inmates, placed him in a cell used for solitary confinement.

Tyler had turned 17 by the time, five months later, a grand jury indicted him for aggravated assault, and his case went before a judge.

Tyler’s defense lawyer, appointed by the court, informed the judge in a court filing that his attempts at speaking with the boy had made it apparent the 17-year-old did not have “sufficient mental capacity” to understand the charge he was facing. The lawyer wanted Tyler to undergo a psychiatric examination. He listed the many reasons why that was appropriate:

During his childhood, Tyler had been found to be suffering from seven different mental disorders, the first diagnosis coming when he was just four years old; he had threatened to bomb his school; he had chased his two siblings with a knife trying to stab them; his family suspected that he’d strangled a cat to death with his bare hands; he’d been hospitalized on several occasions and later placed in a home for troubled boys.

The local prosecutor joined the defense lawyer’s request for an evaluation, and Judge John A. Gregory immediately signed an order to have Tyler assessed at the state hospital in Whitfield to determine if Tyler had a factual and rational understanding of the legal proceeding against him, as well as whether, at the time of the non-fatal assault, he knew the “difference between right and wrong.”

“It is therefore ordered and adjudged,” Gregory wrote on April 23, 2013, “that the defendant Tyler Douglas Haire be given a mental evaluation at the earliest possible date.”

Tyler’s evaluation would not happen for three and a half years.

During the 1,266 days Tyler spent in the Calhoun County jail before he received his evaluation, he was never once visited by a psychiatrist. He went without any of the multiple drugs he had taken as a boy. He received no educational instruction. His father, who’d had his own brushes with the law, had friends of his in jail with Tyler give the boy a beating for the trouble he’d caused his family. His mother came to see him when she could afford the gas money. Once Tyler was found naked in the woods after he ran off during a stint on a work detail.

The sheriff and his deputies spent hours with Tyler, discussing television shows and listening to Tyler vent about the voices he heard. The officers took turns putting $25 a week in Tyler’s commissary account, and in return he’d color them pictures of dragons and aliens.

Rest of the story: https://features.propublica.org/tyle...minal-justice/

[Nomad]

Mental institution.

[Cypress]

Bad parenting and wrong medications may come into play, but I can not really have much empathy for someone who strangles cats.
Get him some meds and institutionalize him if legal and necessary.

There are a lot of mentally ill people who would not hurt a fly. There's a group home near me that provides residence for Down's syndrome (I think) patients, and they come across as innocent, sweet, with a child like purity. In some ways, they strike me as being more sane than the boot licking Trump worshippers - people who admire pussy grabbing, ignorance, and bigotry - found in profusion on the interwebs.

[ThatOwlWoman]

Mental institution.

There really aren't many of those left, esp. in Mississippi where Tyler lives. It took them four yrs just to get him a mental evaluation. He's due to be released any day now. At the end of the article, the sheriff states that he doesn't know what the kid will do. No family to take him in. He has no clue how to rent an apt., pay bills, get a job, drive, anything. Odds are that either he will be victimized, or he will harm someone else.

[ThatOwlWoman]

Bad parenting and wrong medications may come into play, but I can not really have much empathy for someone who strangles cats.
Get him some meds and institutionalize him if legal and necessary.

There are a lot of mentally ill people who would not hurt a fly. There's a group home near me that provides residence for Down's syndrome (I think) patients, and they come across as innocent, sweet, with a child like purity. In some ways, they strike me as being more sane than the boot licking Trump worshippers - people who admire pussy grabbing, ignorance, and bigotry - found in profusion on the interwebs.

Mental illness, like everything else, comes in various forms and severity. I can understand your antipathy towards someone who harms animals; I share it as do most of us. Obviously this kid is a danger not just to animals but to humans as well. It makes me wonder how many thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of Tylers there are in the prison system.

[Cypress]

Mental illness, like everything else, comes in various forms and severity. I can understand your antipathy towards someone who harms animals; I share it as do most of us. Obviously this kid is a danger not just to animals but to humans as well. It makes me wonder how many thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of Tylers there are in the prison system.

Yes, I agree with you -- whether or not he harmed animals, a kid like that should not be tossed into general population with hardened criminals.

[ThatOwlWoman]

Yes, I agree with you -- whether or not he harmed animals, a kid like that should not be tossed into general population with hardened criminals.

I'm not sure he should be let out into the public either.

[Controlled Opposition]

Bad parenting and wrong medications may come into play, but I can not really have much empathy for someone who strangles cats.
Get him some meds and institutionalize him if legal and necessary.

There are a lot of mentally ill people who would not hurt a fly. There's a group home near me that provides residence for Down's syndrome (I think) patients, and they come across as innocent, sweet, with a child like purity. In some ways, they strike me as being more sane than the boot licking Trump worshippers - people who admire pussy grabbing, ignorance, and bigotry - found in profusion on the interwebs.

You have to bring Trump into it. Why?

[Bigdog]

I'm not sure he should be let out into the public either.

He should go live in your house.

[Cypress]

You have to bring Trump into it. Why?

This thread is about mental illness

I consider anyone who votes for a barely articulate, pussy grabbing, dim witted, vindictive, incompetent, Reality TV entertainer to be leader of the free world to be mentally impaired at best. Deranged and delusional at worst.

[Controlled Opposition]

This thread is about mental illness

I consider anyone who votes for a barely articulate, pussy grabbing, dim witted, vindictive, incompetent, Reality TV entertainer to be leader of the free world to be mentally impaired at best. Deranged and delusional at worst.

The story has nothing to do with Donald Trump. As for mental illness, it has a lot more to do with yours than Trump's. Perhaps you should join Jade on his vacation.

[Legion]

This thread is about mental illness

I consider anyone who votes for a barely articulate, pussy grabbing, dim witted, vindictive, incompetent, Reality TV entertainer to be leader of the free world to be mentally impaired at best. Deranged and delusional at worst.

What do you consider a man who stalks, harasses and threatens women, creeper? I've heard that YOU do those things.

[Cypress]

The story has nothing to do with Donald Trump. As for mental illness, it has a lot more to do with yours than Trump's.

Perhaps you should join Jade on his vacation.

I suggest you spend less time thinking about me. I think we have only exchanged maybe three posts, and I have only read about half dozen of your posts at most.

[SmarterthanYou]

why are you libs bitching about this? the government does no wrong, so if they really wanted him to have that evaluation, they would have done it. /sarcasm

[Nomad]

There really aren't many of those left, esp. in Mississippi where Tyler lives. It took them four yrs just to get him a mental evaluation. He's due to be released any day now. At the end of the article, the sheriff states that he doesn't know what the kid will do. No family to take him in. He has no clue how to rent an apt., pay bills, get a job, drive, anything. Odds are that either he will be victimized, or he will harm someone else.

This thread is about mental illness

I consider anyone who votes for a barely articulate, pussy grabbing, dim witted, vindictive, incompetent, Reality TV entertainer to be leader of the free world to be mentally impaired at best. Deranged and delusional at worst.

The story has nothing to do with Donald Trump. As for mental illness, it has a lot more to do with yours than Trump's. Perhaps you should join Jade on his vacation.

Give him a job as a cabinet member or staffer in the Trump White House.

He'd fit right in.