A man who spent months in a Kansas City jail waiting to be transferred to a state psychiatric hospital for court-ordered treatment died on Monday.
Timothy Beckmann was arrested in late September and found incompetent to stand trial due to mental health diagnoses. He was ordered into Department of Mental Health custody in January, joining the list of hundreds of people waiting in jail for a state mental health bed to open up.
Just before 5 p.m. on Monday, 64-year-old Beckmann was found unresponsive in his cell in the Jackson County Detention Center cell, according to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
He was brought to a local hospital, where he was declared dead.
Beckmann hadn’t been convicted of any crimes — his case was on pause while he waited months for mental health treatment.
The cause of death is not yet known. The sheriff’s office, which oversees the jail, told The Independent it is investigating the death and the medical examiner’s office has not yet released a cause of death. The medical examiner’s office told The Independent no reports could be released under public records law while the case is still under investigation.
But in the seven months he spent in pretrial detention, Beckmann’s mental and physical health deteriorated, the public defenders overseeing his case told The Independent on Friday. They say his death is a tragic consequence of the state’s ballooning waitlist for mental health treatment, which leaves people languishing in jail for over a year on average. It’s also an indictment, the public defenders say, of the state’s inadequate support for those with mental illness.
“What happened to Timothy Beckmann is horrific,” said Annie Legomsky, who runs the state public defense system’s holistic defense services program, “and what makes it all the more tragic is that it was entirely preventable.”
She said jails are not equipped to help people with mental illness.
“The inability of our jails to provide appropriate psychiatric care for these individuals is something we’ve been trying to sound the alarm for for a while,” Legomsky said, “and unfortunately, it’s not a surprise that now someone has tragically ended up dying because they weren’t able to get the care they deserved.”
The Missouri Department of Mental Health declined to answer a list of questions, citing patient privacy protections.
Jackson County Sheriff Darryl Forté also declined to answer specific questions, citing patient privacy, but wrote by email that the “death of an individual in our custody is a matter we take with the utmost seriousness and care. We are committed to thoroughly examining all circumstances surrounding such incidents, and this particular case remains under investigation.”
A ‘life or death matter’
Missourians who are arrested and declared incompetent to stand trial wait in jail an average of 14 months before receiving treatment, according to data shared with The Independent earlier this month. Treatment generally includes therapy and medication and is referred to as competency restoration.
There were 418 people on the waitlist earlier this month.
Those being held in jail are sometimes incarcerated for longer than they would be if they’d received the maximum sentence for the crime they were charged with. There have been successful lawsuits in other states arguing the practice violates due process and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Anthony Vibbard, the deputy district defender in Jackson County who oversaw Beckmann’s case, said Beckmann had been in and out of different mental health facilities over the last few decades.
He was arrested and charged with second degree burglary and first degree property damage, according to court records, after breaking a glass door of a home and entering.
Vibbard said Beckmann had been recently released from a mental health facility when he was arrested, and was left “wandering the streets of Kansas City” — where he wasn’t from and had no family. He said Beckmann entered the home because he was tired and hungry and was looking for something to eat.
Vibbard said once Beckmann was in jail, “his condition started deteriorating to the point where he started self harming.”
Vibbard and Legomsky said after he was detained, Beckmann started pulling out his toenails, scratching himself and “losing touch with reality.” At one point, they said, he stopped eating or taking his blood pressure and heart medication.
The process of getting court orders for mental health examinations and referrals to the Department of Mental Health can take months. In Beckmann’s case, he was finally ordered into the department’s custody Jan. 21, nearly four months after he was arrested.
His attorney “sounded the alarms” in court, Vibbard said, trying to talk to judges, convince the department to expedite his treatment and making records of her concerns. Beckmann came to court “visibly frail,” Vibbard said, with “scabs and wounds on his body.”
The legal team received reports he was being held in restraints, which the sheriff’s office declined to comment on. The jail has been sued in the past for its use of restraint chairs.
“[His attorney] made records over and over saying like that, this is bad. Something bad could happen. He needs to be in a hospital and not a jail,” Vibbard said.“…And eventually we got the word that Mr. Beckmann died number 109 on the waiting list for admissions.”
The department declined to confirm that Beckmann was number 109 on the waitlist at the time he died.
Legomsky said despite legislative and court concerns, more needs to be done to remedy the competency restoration issue, “so that people like Mr. Beckmann don’t die locked up in a cell, strapped down.”
“If people don’t know what’s happening,” she said, “and they don’t realize that it’s a life or death matter, I’m worried that the status quo will continue.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
