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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
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href="https://theappeal.org/joshua-mclemore-died-solitary-jackson-county-jail-indiana/">theappeal.org</a>
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<h1 class="reader-title">Indiana Jail Let Man With Schizophrenia
Starve to Death in Solitary, Lawsuit Alleges</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Tana Ganeva Apr 12, 2023</div>
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<section>
<h2>Graphic video footage obtained by The Appeal shows
29-year-old Joshua McLemore wasting away and rolling
in his own waste in the Jackson County Jail before
eventually dying of malnutrition.</h2>
</section>
<section>
<figure> <img
src="https://theappeal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/joshua-mclemore-1200x938-1-jpg.webp"
alt="" data-has-transparency="false"
data-dominant-color="78777c"
class="moz-reader-block-img" width="1200"
height="938">
<p><small>Jackson County Sheriff's Office</small> </p>
</figure>
</section>
<section>
<article>
<section>
<h2>Indiana Jail Let Man With Schizophrenia Starve
to Death in Solitary, Lawsuit Alleges</h2>
<h2>Graphic video footage obtained by The Appeal
shows 29-year-old Joshua McLemore wasting away and
rolling in his own waste in the Jackson County
Jail before eventually dying of malnutrition.</h2>
</section>
<hr>
<p>Jackson County Sheriff’s Office employees in
Indiana locked a man having a psychotic episode in
solitary confinement for three weeks—without mental
health care or even toilet access—until he died of
malnutrition, according to a <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773602-mclemorecomplaintfinaldraft">lawsuit
filed today</a> and video footage of the incident
obtained by The Appeal.</p>
<p>On July 20, 2021, apartment managers entered
29-year-old Indiana resident Joshua McLemore’s home,
found him confused, incoherent, and nude on the
floor, and had McLemore transported to a Seymour,
Indiana, hospital. McLemore’s mother had called her
son’s living complex, worried he could have been
having a psychotic episode. At the hospital,
McLemore grabbed a nurse’s hair and the Seymour
Police Department arrested him on battery charges.</p>
<p>At the Jackson County Jail, McLemore, who had
schizophrenia, was stripped naked and thrown into
solitary confinement in what was known as “<a
href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ta3e6gkula815j9/AADPlicCFOGAtavlOdEiYyTma/Jackson%20County%20Jail%20records?dl=0&preview=Electronic+log+entries.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1">Padded
Cell 7</a>,” a small room without toilet access.</p>
<p>Surveillance footage over 21 days shows him
screaming; rocking back and forth; licking the
walls; smearing his feces and urine all over the
floor; violently shoving a plastic bottle into his
rectum; throwing his food on the ground; and eating
the styrofoam food trays that made their way through
the thin slot at the cell door.</p>
<p>According to the lawsuit, he lost 45 pounds in less
than a month. Jail staff rarely checked in on him.
Jackson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) employees
occasionally placed McLemore in restraints and
wheeled him into a shower as JCSO forced other
imprisoned people to clean the excrement in his
cell. On August 8, a guard named Beverly texted her
supervisor, “Just bathed him. And he can’t hold his
hands, legs, anything. He’s dead weight.”</p>
<p>In the footage, McLemore’s body visibly shrinks
over weeks until he doesn’t have the strength to
hold his head up.</p>
<p>“Get up, buddy,” a corrections officer asks. But he
can’t. In one portion of the footage, a female guard
sprays him with liquid soap and hoses him down so
that he does not smell before EMS comes.</p>
<p>On August 8, jail officials noticed that
McLemore—visibly emaciated and unable to hold up his
body—likely needed medical care. But medical
officials were unable to save him. According to a
suit, doctors listed McLemore’s cause of death as
“multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or
drink with altered mental status due to untreated
schizophrenia.”</p>
<p>McLemore’s family alleges that at least 20 people,
including <a
href="https://theappeal.org/the-power-of-sheriffs-an-explainer/">Sheriff</a>
Rick Meyer, had access to roughly 400 hours of
footage of McLemore wasting away in his cell. Edwin
Budge, the family’s attorney, said he could not
understand why no one called 911 earlier.</p>
<p>“I think that’s the million-dollar question,” Budge
said. “I don’t think there’s a good answer. It’s a
systemic deficiency that runs from the top down.”
The family is suing the county, the sheriff’s
office, and Advanced Correctional Healthcare, the
for-profit medical company that cared for McLemore
in jail, for allegedly violating McLemore’s civil
rights.</p>
<p>Budge added that the incident was “not a mistake.
This was day after day of neglect.”</p>
<p>McLemore is not the only person who died after
being allegedly left without care in the Jackson
County Jail. In 2021, 23-year-old Ta’Neasha Chappell
<a
href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/indiana/2021/12/18/taneasha-chappell-death-update-indiana-prosecutor-declines-charges/8946040002/">died</a>
after she <a
href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2022/01/21/taneasha-chappell-louisville-woman-begged-for-help-before-jail-death/6579985001/">begged
for help and repeatedly vomited blood inside the
facility. </a>The Louisville Courier-Journal <a
href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/investigations/2021/09/01/taneasha-chappell-case-investigation-launched-into-2nd-inmate-death/5622585001/">previously
reported</a> that Indiana State Police had
launched an investigation into McLemore’s death in
2021. The following year, prosecutors announced that
<a
href="https://fox59.com/indiana-news/naked-tired-and-hungry-investigation-into-inmate-death-reveals-apparent-negligence/">no
one would be criminally charged</a> over the
ordeal.</p>
<p>The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to
a request for comment. In an emailed statement, a
spokesperson for Advanced Correctional Healthcare
said that the company takes “criticisms of the care
provided by our team seriously” but is prohibited by
federal privacy laws from discussing individual
medical cases.</p>
<p>The spokesperson’s email signature included a Bible
quote.</p>
<p>“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you
hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes
or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’” the
quote reads.<b><sup> </sup></b>“He will reply,
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one
of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Matthew 25:44-45.”</p>
<figure> <br>
</figure>
<figure> <img
src="https://theappeal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/joshua-and-rhonda-mclemore.png"
alt="Rhonda McLemore (left) and Joshua McLemore
(right) smiling at the camera during Christmas
time. A Santa Claus statue stands between them."
data-has-transparency="true"
data-dominant-color="8c7a70"
class="moz-reader-block-img" width="658"
height="658">
<div> <figcaption>Rhonda McLemore (left) and Joshua
McLemore (right)</figcaption>
<p><small>Courtesy of the McLemore family</small>
</p>
</div>
</figure>
<p>McLemore was born in Gulfport, Mississippi.
According to the suit, he liked reading and playing
chess. His mother, Rhonda, was a single mother and a
member of the US Navy. In high school, he started
having mental health problems and was eventually
diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was hospitalized
repeatedly during his lifetime for mental health
issues and fluctuated between periods of relative
stability and mental illness and drug use. He moved
to Seymour, Indiana, a town of about 20,000 people,
in 2020.</p>
<p>But, by July 2021, McLemore’s condition had
worsened again. After McLemore’s mother alerted the
staff at her son’s apartment complex that he might
be in trouble, facility managers called 911. Per the
suit, emergency responders said McLemore had acted
erratically, given the wrong name, and did not let
medical personnel touch him.</p>
<p>After being coaxed into the ambulance, medical
professionals reported that McLemore began chewing
on the seatbelts and railings attached to his
stretcher. Hospital records state that McLemore
admitted to having used methamphetamine in the past.
The drug is common in Southern Indiana—the area is <a
href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/22/meth-pipeline-into-midwest-reveals-cjng-drug-cartels-honey-hole/3871167001/">known
as the “honey hole”</a> due to its reputation as a
meth pipeline.</p>
<p>When a hospital nurse leaned in too closely to
check on McLemore, the suit states that he pulled
her hair. The hospital then called the Seymour
Police Department, which shackled his arms and legs
and carried him out wearing nothing but underwear.
The suit states that McLemore bit the police’s car
door as cops placed him inside.</p>
<p>Once at the Jackson County Jail, the suit states
that JCSO and medical personnel failed to take
McLemore’s baseline vital signs and instead threw
him alone into a small, rectangular room with only a
covered window in his cell door. Fluorescent lights
blared overhead 24 hours a day. When McLemore
arrived at the jail, the suit states that jail
employees stripped him nude and left him in a corner
of the cell. McLemore then began licking the walls
and loudly asking, “Where am I?”</p>
<p>The UN considers <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/02/united-states-prolonged-solitary-confinement-amounts-psychological-torture">more
than 15 days</a> in solitary to be <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/02/united-states-prolonged-solitary-confinement-amounts-psychological-torture">torture</a>.
However, JCSO officials held McLemore <a
href="https://theappeal.org/politicalreport/sheriffs-solitary-confinement/">in
the cell</a> for the next three weeks as a camera
recorded him. The suit alleges that, even though
Indiana law mandates that people held in solitary
confinement must be let out of their cells for an
hour each day, JCSO officials did not bother to do
so. The jail is otherwise overcrowded—despite not
having the facilities to care for people long-term,
the jail, like many others around the country,
houses people both pretrial and for prison stays.
But Budge, the family’s attorney, stressed that
overcrowding did not explain what happened to his
client.</p>
<p>“Everyone just decided it was a problem for the
next shift,” he said.</p>
<p>Jail staff placed McLemore on “medical
observation,” which meant employees needed to check
on him every 15 minutes. The cell contained a room
with a toilet and sink, but officials left the door
to that area locked. The suit alleges that McLemore
was too mentally unwell to ask to use the bathroom.
Instead, he used the floor.</p>
<p>“He walked barefoot in his own human waste, rolled
around in it, and ate food from it,” the suit says.
“He lay on a urine-covered mat and wrapped himself
in a urine-soaked blanket. He did all of this in
plain view of the guards who were supposed to be
monitoring him every 15 minutes.”</p>
<p>McLemore barely slept, ate, or drank during his
stay in the cell. According to the suit, jail logs
state that McLemore retrieved just 19 of the drinks
he was given during his 20-day stay at the facility.
On August 8, the lawsuit says guards noticed
McLemore’s condition had grown so poor that he
likely needed medical care. He could not drink a
bottle of Gatorade on his own and needed to be fed
the drink by hand. Before being sent to the
hospital, jail officials again washed him by pouring
a few buckets of cold water over his body and
scrubbing him with a towel. He was intubated upon
arriving at the hospital and eventually diagnosed
with multiple medical conditions, including a lack
of oxygen in his blood, severe dehydration, and
kidney failure.</p>
<p>The local hospital eventually decided it could not
care for him, and McLemore was airlifted to an ICU
in Cincinnati. His mother, Rhonda, traveled to the
facility from Mississippi. And, on August 10, Rhonda
McLemore decided she had no other option but to take
her son off of life support and let him die.</p>
<p>Roughly 16 months later, Rhonda herself had a fatal
heart attack. Her family believes she died of grief.</p>
<p>“They’re sure his awful death put a hole in her
heart, and that’s what killed her,” Budge said.</p>
<hr role="divider">
<p><em>The Appeal is publishing video of the incident
with the approval of McLemore’s family. To watch
the footage, </em><a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j61mE1C3ERo"><em>click
here.</em></a></p>
<p></p>
<p><em>This piece has been updated to include a
statement from Advanced Correctional Healthcare.</em></p>
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