DANGEROUS JAILS – PART 2: The Death of the Mamma’s Boy

NOTE: 2ND OF 2 PARTS. READ PART 1 HERE

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Helen Jones tried to keep her voice even and in control when, after a few opening questions, I asked her how she learned about her son’s suicide. Twenty-two-year old John Horton hanged himself March 30 after being kept in solitary confinement for more than a month in LA’s Men’s Central Jail. He spent nearly every hour of every day in a closet-sized cell with no windows, no furniture save a bed, and a lamp that produced very little light. John Horton had, according to information obtained by ACLU attorney Melinda Bird, given plenty of signals that something was desperately wrong. But reportedly no one paid any attention.

“Two sheriff’s deputies came to my daughters apartment and told us that my son was dead,” Helen said flatly. Her daughter is 23, a year older than John, she said. “I have two children, a boy and a girl, and I’m close to both of them.”

I noticed that Helen Jones could not yet bring herself to use the past tense. In the pause that followed, I suspected that she noticed too.

When we continued again, Helen said that she had not been unhappy that her son was in jail. To the contrary, she was optimistic that the arrest would be the wake up call he needed to get him off of drugs and back on a positive path.

John Horton had originally been arrested for drug possession in 2007. At that time, he accepted a plea agreement and was ordered by the judge to go to a drug rehab. Horton agreed eagerly. But on the day he was supposed to report to the rehab facility, he never showed up. As a consequence a bench warrant was issued in his name.

Fast forward to late February of 2009. Helen Jones was worried about her son. She didn’t see him use drugs but she knew something was amiss, “He was a good boy. But he was messed up, she said. He loved kids. He was talented boxer. But he was having problems, she said, and she was at a loss to know what to do about it.

Finally one night Helen found John overdosed. She was fairly sure he had taken a bunch of pills. Scared, she drove him to the emergency room of St. Francis Hospital.

At the hospital, the existence of the arrest warrant was discovered. Once Horton was determined to be out of immediate danger, he was taken to Men’s Central Jail.

Helen went to visit him a day later and he still seemed very groggy. I’m alright, he told her. I’m reading the Bible. It’s okay.

Helen Jones wasn’t sure. So she made a point of going to the jail again a couple of days later. This time she was told her son could have no visitors. Nor could he make phone calls. “He’s in protective custody,” the deputy said. No one seemed to have an explanation for this PC designation.

Helen tried again a few days later still. She was told once again that John could have no visitors. Worried, she asked to see the Watch Commander, who was singularly uninformative. “My son needs to know I’m here for him,” she told the officer. “He needs my support.”

Helen Jones next saw her son on March 16 when he went to court to face the consequences of his AWOL from rehab. According to Helen, the judge seemed to see that John was no hard core criminal but a young man in need of help. In any case, he sentenced Horton to two years in fire camp, a plum of a program only open to nonviolent, low-level offenders. He would technically be incarcerated but he would learn a trade and get back in good physical condition. Helen Jones was incredibly relieved. Overjoyed, really.

“When I talked to him, he was relieved too,” she told me. There would be no more running. No more drugs. “He was already planning what he would do in two years when he was released. He wanted to come out and go back to boxing. That was his plan.”

Helen actually thanked the judge.

Yet, there was one thing that concerned her during the hearing and that was her son’s mental condition. He was behaving strangely.

“He wasn’t all the way right,” she said. The judge who, according to Helen Jones, recognized that Horton was in some kind of state of mental distress, told her that John would be in the medical unit of the jail for at least the beginning of the two or three weeks it would take to arrange the transfer to fire camp. He told her that she shouldn’t worry.

A few days later, Helen Jones again went to visit her son, but was once more told he could have no visitors, and could not make phone calls. “He’s supposed to be in the medical unit,” she told the jail staff. No, he was in “protective custody,” they said. Again there was no explanation.

She went again. And again.

The last day that Helen went to visit her son at Men’s Central Jail, it was on a weekend. This time she was told he was in “disciplinary custody.” Frightened and furious, she asked how he could go from isolation in protective custody to isolation in disciplinary custody, when a judge had supposedly slated him for the medical unit. Had John done something wrong? The staff said they could give her no information.

Helen again asked to see the watch commander. She was told that seeing a watch commander was not possible. By this time, Helen had been trying to visit her son for a month and had been repeatedly put off. She was not about to be put off again. She worked her way up the command structure until finally the watch commander did come out to talk to her. He was very polite, she told me. Kind even.

Since it was the weekend, he said, if she would come back the following Wednesday, he would get to the bottom of things and have an answer for her then.

Wednesday turned out to be too late. “By Monday he was gone,” she said.

John Horton hanged himself on Monday, March 30.

Helen Jones and I sat quietly on the phone for a while after she told me the last part of the story. I too am a mother, I said. I too have a son. Mine is 23, I said, the age of her daughter.

“My daughter’s having anxiety attacks,” Helen said softly. “She was really close to her brother.”

We were silent again.

“When you think back to happy times with your son,” I asked carefully, “what first comes to mind?”

Until that moment, Helen Jones’ tone had remained remarkably steady . At my words, her voice caught and then broke with an audible shattering.

“I remember that I was loved,” she said, suddenly speaking through a cascade of sobs.

“My son loved me. He was a mama’s boy. He was big and strong but he wasn’t afraid to hug his mamma. The girls used to tell me that they liked that about him. ‘You can trust a mamma’s boy’ they told me. He would hold my hand, and not think anything about it. That’s what I miss. I miss being loved by my son, my beautiful son”

She cried some more. I cried too.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No. It helps for somebody else to hear me,”Helen Jones said.

Her voice caught again. “I don’t want him to just be one more death that nobody notices.”

“He won’t be,” I said. And I hoped very much I was telling her the truth.