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Case of inmate suicide closes with tears

During closing arguments in a lawsuit against Pinellas officials, the plaintiff's attorney starts sobbing.

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE
Published February 3, 2006

Six years have passed since John Patterson was found dead in a Pinellas County Jail cell, a victim of the anxiety and racing thoughts that led him to hang himself with his own shoelace.

The date was Oct. 1, 1999. In the weeks, months and now years of finger-pointing and tears that followed, that is one of the few facts that remains undisputed.

Attorneys made closing arguments Thursday in a wrongful death lawsuit that Patterson's mother brought against former Sheriff Everett Rice, the Pinellas County Commission, and Mark Ondrey, the detention deputy who supervised the psychological observation unit where Patterson was held the day before his death.

Jurors began deliberations late Thursday and were expected continue today.

Roy L. Glass, Florence Patterson's attorney, told them there was one question that mattered above all:

"Was John Patterson's death while he was in the care, custody and control of the Pinellas County Jail preventable?"

Glass said Florence Patterson is asking for $1.2-million in damages - $100,000 for each syllable in the words "responsibility" and "accountability."

When Patterson, 42, violated his probation and turned himself in to authorities on Sept. 28, 1999, his problems were already well-documented. The skilled mechanic and father of a newborn girl, Kaylin, was estranged from his wife and had recently lost his job. When he entered the jail, he brought medications for his various mental illnesses, among them bipolar disorder with psychotic features.

Patterson also was addicted to drugs and alcohol, according to court pleadings. Once before, he tried committing suicide.

Glass alleged that Ondrey was recklessly negligent of Patterson's condition when he periodically patrolled the psychological wing until his shift ended at 11:30 p.m. Inmate witnesses had testified that Patterson, of Treasure Island, was depressed, feeling suicidal and told them so.

Ondrey testified that he spoke with Patterson after noticing that he was weaving something with his shoelace. Patterson said he was making a cross. Ondrey confiscated it as contraband, according to court records.

With the other shoelace, Patterson hung himself on a towel rack about 4 a.m.

Comparing Ondrey to the three monkeys who hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil, Glass also showed jurors a massive cartoon drawing of an ostrich with its head buried in sand.

Thomas E. Spencer, the county's attorney, countered that Ondrey was a decorated corrections deputy, both highly trained and compassionate. The inmate witnesses, he said, were felons trying to "hustle" the jurors.

As for the Sheriff's Office being negligent, he said that under its watch, the jail had a suicide rate of about one per 50,000 inmates.

"You are five times safer in the Pinellas County Jail than if you were in the hands of your own doctor," Spencer said.

A Sheriff's Office internal investigation found that all detention deputies and jail staff members followed proper rules and procedures. Florence Patterson filed her lawsuit a year later.

During his closing statement, Glass also emphasized who he thought to be the real victim of the suicide: Kaylin Patterson, a friendly 6-year-old with an IQ of 113 who asked if she could dig up her daddy the first time she visited his gravesite.

"You have the loss of one life," he told jurors. "And you have the loss of a father."

At that point, Glass paused, head bowed and face red. Then he broke down in tears. He excused himself and walked out of the courtroom.

As the doors swayed, his sobbing could be heard throughout the gallery.

When arguments resumed about 10 minutes later, Glass apologized for losing his "professional objectivity." He had been working on the Patterson case for five years, he told the court, and the trial had lasted four weeks instead of two.

Later, the St. Petersburg attorney seemed bewildered at his tears. Sometimes he got emotional during cases, but this time it was different, he said.

"I just lost it," Glass said. "I wasn't acting."

When Spencer said in his closing argument that Kaylin's "life would be a train wreck" had her alcoholic and gambling father raised her, Glass' face turned red during rebuttal.

He walked past the court reporter, grabbed an empty desk chair and rolled it roughly to the plaintiff's table. What did he warn jurors in his opening statement, he said.

"You're going to hear them attack John Patterson," he said. "Who are they to say that Kaylin wouldn't think that her father, her daddy, was a hero?"

[Last modified February 3, 2006, 01:24:20]