The inmate was arrested and jailed, and Judge Weech held a Rights hearing on Tuesday at the jail. A bond hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, February 22, but Puchmelter was pronounced dead before that. His date of death has not been announced.
The inmate, Thomas Puchmelter, was served an Order of Protection. The Order was issued on February 16. It must have been served to him while he was in jail. I don't know where in the building he was, when it was served on him.
What impact do you suppose that service of an Order of Protection might have had on Puchmelter?
What impact would it have had on you? Suppose you had taken a bat to your mother on a Tuesday, perhaps while you were under the influence of alcohol, and then, three days later while you were sitting in jail and presumably had sobered up, you were served with an OP. Might you already have been depressed over your actions? Might you feel regretful? sad? hopeless? Might you have raged at anyone around you? Might you have felt suicidal?
And, if you were raging, do you think that the jailers would have noticed? Would that possibly have alarmed, or at least alerted, them to your mental condition?
Jailers are not there just to keep you from breaking out. While you are incarcerated, you are in their care. Now, they can't prevent all the possibilities of self-harm. But they might prevent some of them.
And, no doubt, the corrections officers in the McHenry County Jail do prevent many possibilities of self-harm.
So, what was Thomas Puchmelter's emotional condition on Friday evening?
6 comments:
Congrats! A new low.
The more important question is what was his 70 year old mother's emotional condition after being attacked with a baseball bat? NShe didn't have the luxury of "sobering up" after the event and being able to reflect upon the actions her son chose to inflict on her. It is a tragedy all around. Period.
The jail has a responsibility to ensure the safety of the prisoner. One of those "special relationship" situations they talk about in Torts. Somebody goofed.
Nobody goofed-you want to "off" yourself, you can do it so many ways. The guy was probably in the medical section, which is closely guarded. I understand that the guards found him, got him breathing again, and had him taken to Centegra, where he died after they found that he was brain dead, and Mom "pulled the plug". Sad ending to a sad man and a sad relationship.
You don't think they owed him a duty to protect him (from himself) as he was incarcerated? Hmm... Well, now mom can sue the county.
I can't get my posts to show up. Doesn't Gus like humor
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