Posted on 05/24/2009 9:59:03 AM PDT by SmithL
In 1992, after he stopped wearing clothes to his UC Berkeley classes, Andrew Martinez was something of a walking only-in-Berserkeley joke as the campus' own Naked Guy. But his life was no laughing matter.
Around 1997, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 2003, he was arrested for assaulting a staff member at a halfway house where he was a resident. He spent the next 21/2 years in Santa Clara County jail, its acute psychiatric unit, Napa and Atascadero state hospitals - until at age 33, he killed himself by suffocating himself with a plastic bag in a jail cell on May 18, 2006.
Last week, Santa Clara County announced that it settled a wrongful-death lawsuit and would pay $1 million to his mother, Esther Krenn. The county also agreed to notify families when inmates try to kill themselves or have a breakdown, which, the county's lead Deputy County Counsel John Winchester told The Chronicle's Henry K. Lee, it already had been doing informally.
On Tuesday, California voters rejected five budget measures on the special election ballot. Yet this settlement with the Naked Guy's mother demonstrates how impossible it is to expect state and local governments to deliver leaner, smarter services. The incentives in government reward spending, not saving.
To start, $1 million seemed a large sum to award a mother for a son with little to no earning power.
Granted, the system fails whenever a mentally ill person kills himself
...There is another effect, however, of policy by litigation: It adds up. Government bodies are choosing to settle because it's "near-term" cheaper. Thus jail policies constantly are rewritten until you see "a way of running jails and prisons that very few people would have designed from scratch," ... "Outside management by litigators" amounts to "management by no one at all."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Sounds like he was crazy more than being a jerk.
I have a hang nail. The government didn’t provide the nail clippers I needed to correct the problem. I’m going to sue them for a million dollars. Get me a ambulance chasing lawyer and bet I get it. Hot coffee anyone?
For a state that is so broke I’m surprised they have the time & money for this foolishness...
His mother was not there to take care of him,but was present
to sue!
Beware the naked man who says he has a package for you.
Yes, far more crazy than a jerk. As this article shows, our society suffers from well-intentioned liberal legal action. She highlights the wealth transfer to the mother and the lawyers. But the taxpayers pay for more and more complicated processes in the jails and can expect more tragedies like this because truly ill and dangerous people are kept in prison but not treated medically as they should be. That’s today’s fallout from liberals committing random acts of destruction and calling it kindness.
I was pursuing a ms in psych and visited the state pen to see prisoners clinically evaluated. This was about the time that liberals were emptying mental hospitals because the ‘freedom’ of the patients was valued more highly than their safety and health and the safety of society.
Our liberal political elites decided that we have to tolerate a deranged young man wandering around campus naked. We have to tolerate occasional violence and mayhem from people like this (and the women who hear voices telling them to kill their children). And if the poor sick peron happens to commit suicide while actually in custody we have to pay for that and make additional efforts to stop it. Nevermind that they WILL FIND A WAY because they are insane.
“His mother was not there to take care of him...”
I have no real-world experience in this, but I would imagine that it is nearly impossible for a schizophrenic to be cared for in a home situation.
Whether or not his suicide demostrates negligence on the part of the State, I don’t know.
To Everyone:
Don’t you know who the Berkeley “Naked Guy” is / was?
Did you not notice that he “attended classes” for something like 6 years, totally naked?
No imposition on the other 50,000 men women and children living in and around the school? Not arrested? Free housing? At the time he was celebrated not as sick but a free thinker. Laws only apply to which part of society? Us? Certainly not to him ...
And then he kills himself. How is this the state’s fault? Don’t people kill themselves everyday? I suppose that if you work at it hard enough (!), every single suicide in California, is in some way the “state’s fault”.
Gee, no wonder California has no money.
I wonder how much of that million the mother got and how much the lawyer got?
If the state is going to keep a known crazy locked up, they probably have to accept some responsibility for making sure he doesn’t kill himself.
If someone is hell bent on committing suicide, they will do it and no hospital or correctional facility will be able to stop them.
“At the time he was celebrated not as sick but a free thinker.”
Yes, a large portion of the Dem base has unacknowledged mental illness.
90% of trial lawyers contribute to Dems. Recently overturned was the 10-or-more year old case of gender discrimination in workplace, opening up possibilities of many more lawsuits. Also recently overturned the medical devices ruling which will increase number of class actions. The goal that I can see is to break corporate power. All will be owned/managed by central authority. Of course, then the trial lawyers will have no deep pockets to sue.
Pretty much true. Chronic schizophrenics have a very high suicide rate, and self- smothering with the plastic bag/wastebasket liner is a favorite method of doing it if confined in an institution.
Horse puckey. If the system is ever so wide-spread and invasive that every suicide is rendered impossible, then we're all in a worse situation than ever imagined in Brave New World et al.
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