Father blasts prison for care of suicidal son

BANGOR – The father of a Maine State Prison inmate who committed suicide four years ago angrily accused state officials of mishandling his son’s case and said prison guards and other witnesses lied when they talked about extensive training given prison staff on symptoms of suicide.

Donald Pelletier of Auburn complained of a confusing correctional system where, at times, he could not find his mentally ill son. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, the son, Ronald Pelletier, was housed on a mental health ward at Thomaston and not put in the general prison population. Yet at times, despite supposed increased security, “nobody knew where he was. He was lost in the [critical care unit],” the father said.

Donald Pelletier testified during the third and final day of a nonjury trial at U.S. District Court in Bangor. He is suing two prison guards and a mental health clinical coordinator at the Maine State Prison, alleging deliberate indifference to his son’s safety and constitutional rights violations. He seeks punitive damages.

The father is mainly questioning why a person as mentally ill as his son was allowed to wear his belt, an item prosecuting attorney Tyler Kolle of Lewiston called a “ready-made noose.”

Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk presided. She said she would issue an opinion as soon as possible in a case she described as “a difficult matter” for both the parents and the defendants.

A similar lawsuit soon will be filed in Maine. Augusta attorney Walter McKee said he has served notice of claim papers on defendants for the mother of Jason Rozell, 24, who hanged himself April 8 at Kennebec County Jail.

Grim statistics on jail suicides were given during the Pelletier trial. For instance, the suicide rate is nine times higher for incarcerated people than for the general population. The main method chosen is death by hanging. The mental ward where Ronald Pelletier was housed kept a “noose knife” handy at all times to cut down people who tried to hang themselves.

Pelletier was one of four children born to Donald and Judy Pelletier, but the only one critically ill with a mental disease known to be incurable. He often heard voices that nobody else heard urging him to harm himself or others, according to court testimony.

Ronald Pelletier was serving a five-year prison sentence after an arson conviction. He hanged himself with a belt on cell bars Oct. 3, 1998, while housed in the Mental Health Stabilization Unit at Thomaston.

A consulting psychiatrist, the former director of Augusta Mental Health Institute, and a nurse each testified about Ronald Pelletier’s complex mental condition which could make him cycle from happy to wildly unmanageable and suicidal within minutes. Despite written log entries terming him “stable,” Ronald Pelletier said he had to be considered suicidal all the time, according to court testimony.

Assistant Attorney General Susan Sparaco said prison guards had the challenge of trying to prevent extensive suffering to people like Pelletier while keeping order in the general prison population.

Pelletier could have been kept naked in an empty room, as he was for months at the Androscoggin County Jail before he got to prison, but society in general does not tolerate such treatment, Sparaco said. “They allowed him to have his clothes to promote his own sense of dignity and self-worth.”

Kolle mentioned a “damning report” issued two years after Pelletier’s suicide. Composed by prison staff member Lorraine Stills, the report referred to a “decomposition” or breakdown in routine on weekends.

This breakdown bothered Pelletier, who killed himself between 4 and 5 p.m. on a Saturday, about eight minutes after he last was checked.