RICHMOND, Va. — Jamycheal Mitchell loved making people laugh and was known for his smile. Beneath his friendly persona, however, was a young man with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia who dropped out of high school and couldn’t hold a steady job. Despite those troubles, the 24-year-old appeared to have a positive outlook.
“Every time we had family events, Jamycheal was the center of attention,” his cousin Jenobia Meads said.
Then, last year, a small transgression – the theft of $5 in junk food from a convenience store – ended with Mitchell’s death in jail.
He was accused in April 2015 of stealing a Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake from a 7-Eleven in Portsmouth, a small city along Virginia’s Elizabeth River where most residents, like Mitchell, are black. Critics say his arrest effectively became a death sentence, and they blame failures in Virginia’s mental health and criminal justice systems.
Mitchell was ordered to a state mental hospital after his arrest. Instead, he spent months behind bars before being found dead in his jail cell last August. He died of heart failure accompanied by severe weight loss, a medical examiner said.
A year later, questions remain about how Mitchell deteriorated in plain sight of jail and health officials, frustrating advocates who say they fear that thousands of mentally ill people behind bars in Virginia remain at risk.
“We haven’t really been given many great answers as far as any reassurances that people with mental illnesses aren’t going to die anymore,” said Mira Signer, executive director of National Alliance on Mental Illness in Virginia.
Mitchell’s family filed a $60 million lawsuit accusing jail officials of physically abusing Mitchell and withholding food. Mitchell was treated like a “circus animal,” a fellow inmate said in the lawsuit, which claims jail officials kicked, punched, and mocked Mitchell, and sprayed him with mace.
Hampton Roads Regional Jail has pushed back fiercely against the claims, denying that employees mistreated Mitchell and arguing that officers routinely checked on him and provided three meals daily. Jail officials initially said video footage captured outside Mitchell’s cell had been recorded over, but they changed course in court documents last month. Officials now say video exists but have declined to release it.
