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dahliaduvide · 4 months

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I've been digging into the life of Jeremy Wade Delle, beyond just the day of his death that is immortalized in the Pearl Jam song we all know so well.

One thing Jeremy Delle and I have in common is that we both spent time in a psych hospital in our teenage years. We both ended up in adolescent wards of large chain hospitals. My experience wasn't completely negative, but I don't think it helped anyone but my mother.

Jeremy Delle was hospitalized in April of 1990 after what is believed to have been his first suicide attempt.

His parents put him in Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital where he started seeing a doctor that continued to treat him until his death by suicide on January 8, 1991. He actually had completed a session with his doctor the afternoon before he died.

The redacted police report gives only a small amount of information about the doctor that Jeremy Delle was seeing. His name is given as Dr. Bob H####, and as Dr. Robert H#### on a card that the police found in Mr. Delle's wallet. This card lists two phone numbers for the doctor. The first if the general number for the Timberlawn facility, but the other number is likely a direct line to the doctor's office.

The information given in the July 1990 list of hospitals printed in D Magazine, a local Dallas publication, about Timberlawn is "4600 Samuell Blvd, Dallas. 381-7181. Psychiatric hospital; 232 beds; offers chemical dependency treatment, occupational therapy, and psychiatric unit". That's the same as the first phone number listed on the card on Jeremy Delle's wallet card. The second is 381-6327.

Without a last name, I couldn't search for any other mentions of the doctor in public records (and I didn't find anything relevant using the phone number), but there were certainly a few articles about Timberlawn. More than a few, I had to winnow them down to the ones that seemed most relevant to what Jeremy Delle might have experienced during his stay there.

This article from June 1990 explains the sudden growth in the industry in Texas. The financial motivations behind it have very distinct consequences that the article outlines: patients rarely stay longer than their insurance foots the bill.

When the money runs out everyone- adult, teenager, addict, seems to be miraculously cured.

There are several claims of misconduct by care providers throughout the time surrounding Jeremy Delle's stay at Timberlawn.

May 1988: A Dallas woman is admitted to the substance abuse program at Timberlawn. In February 1996, when she is in her early 30s, she alleges misconduct by her doctor during her stay at Timberlawn.

May 1991: In March 1993, a patient alleges he was pursued by his doctor after seeking treatment at Timberlawn for depression after the end of his marriage. He also alleges that she initiated an inappropriate romantic and sexual relationship which lasted from November 1991 to February 1992.

Obviously, Mr. Delle would have been, or at least should have been, housed in separate adolescent areas from any adult patients, but he might have seen the same doctors. Particularly because he was treated for substance abuse. I have some doubts about whether he was actually using any drugs or not, but I'll put that together in another post with some supporting documents.

I also found these court documents from 2009 relating to a patient that was hospitalized in the Timberlawn facility as a minor. She claims to have been raped by an older male patient due to inadequate supervision of the patients by staff and a lack of private space available to patients. No dates or ages are given, however, so it's impossible to know if this happened within the early 90s. However, if Jeremy Delle had survived until 2009 he would have been in his mid-20s, which is when childhood traumas begin to be understood by a maturing mind.

I'm not a lawyer and couldn't even pretend to be one on the internet, so I won't claim to understand anything about what is happening, but I can read through it and capture other facts about who, where, when, etc. If anybody with a better understanding of USA or Texas state law wants to shed some light on this that would be helpful.

I wasn't able to find any further information about the progress or outcomes of these cases, so I've chosen not to include the names of the staff accused, but they are included in the media coverage if anyone would like to search through news databases that aren't freely available online. I can only research the documents I can find, and unfortunately I don't have access to any academic databases at the moment, either.

My personal opinion is that whatever started Jeremy Delle down a troubled path started before he got to Timberlawn and the care of Dr. H.

I do think this line of research is important for understanding whether or not Mr. Delle received effective or adequate care as his mental illness spiraled out of control.

It strikes me that these stories about Timberlawn confirm and debunk some of the conceptions we have about this particular young man's life from the song written about him in 1991 by Eddie Vedder and Jason Ament. Jeremy Wade Delle was failed by everyone in his life with the power to help him as he started to sink under the waves of his illness. But his parents didn't ignore it completely, they tried to get him help. Maybe not when his illness first manifested, but as soon as his first 'cry for help' came in the form of a suicide attempt, they put him in a hospital that was known to be the best in their area. One with a developing, supposedly cutting edge, program for adolescents and those suffering from substance abuse. They most likely brought him home when the hospital said he was better. Sadly that might have had more to do with how long the hospital knew that insurance would foot the bill and not Mr. Delle's actual mental health.

The story is no less tragic than the story Pearl Jam spins in their song, but it's far more nuanced.

And it's still a great song.

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#motivation & inspiration #jeremy delle #gun violence #murder ballads #suicide #depression #medical abuse #psychiatric exploitation #texas #jeremy wade delle #timberlawn #timberlawn psychiatric hospital #original post

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beardedmrbean · 1 year

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Texas executed Gary Green on Tuesday evening despite questions about whether his intellectual disability and history of mental illness should disqualify him from a death sentence.

Green, 51, was convicted in 2010 for the murder of his wife, Lovetta Armstead, and her 6-year-old daughter, Jazzmen Montgomery, the year before. After Green learned that his wife wanted to annul their marriage, he fatally stabbed Armstead and drowned Montgomery in a bathtub, according to court filings. Green turned himself in to police and confessed to the killings.

"I took not one, but two people that we all loved, and I had to live with that while I was here. I ask that you forgive me, not for me but for y'all. I'm fixing to go home and y'all are going to be here. I want to make sure you don't suffer. You have to forgive me to heal and move on," Green said in his final statement. He was pronounced dead at 7:07 p.m. Tuesday.

Green's lawyers wrote to Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot in late February asking him to join their request to delay Green''s execution so he could undergo further tests of his intellectual disability. Creuzot did not join the motion.

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While experts testified at his trial that Green likely had schizoaffective disorder, his lawyers say his defense counsel did not adequately look at how the condition impacted his life, or what role it played in the murders. Under Texas law, jurors are allowed to consider mitigating evidence such as mental illness when deciding on a death sentence. Green appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which upheld his conviction and death sentence.

"An explanation of Green's manifestation of schizoaffective disorder would have aided the jury in weighing Green's moral culpability for his offense," Michael Mowla, one of Green's attorneys, said in a statement. "It is clear from Green's statements that his mental state at the time of the crime was heavily influenced by his severe and persistent mental illness, especially as filtered through his severe cognitive limitations."

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 prohibited the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Texas defines intellectual disability based on low IQ scores, with 70 generally considered a threshold; how inmates interact with others and care for themselves; and whether deficiencies in those areas occurred before the age of 18. The lowest IQ score that Green submitted in his state proceedings was 78, placing him in the "borderline" range of intellectual functioning.

Green had planned to "take five lives," he wrote in a letter to Armstead. He attempted to kill Armstead's sons, then ages 9 and 12, but they persuaded him not to, according to court filings. Green then attempted suicide by consuming a large amount of Tylenol and Benadryl. When Green turned himself in to the police hours later, he said he believed the family was plotting against him.

One month before the killings, Green tried to get help at Timberlawn psychiatric hospital in Dallas. He was incorrectly diagnosed, discharged after four days and later unable to continue the antipsychotic medication he was prescribed because of cost.

Green is also involved in an ongoing legal battle over the state's use of expired drugs to kill prisoners. With fewer pharmacies willing to produce execution drugs, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has for years extended the use-by dates for lethal injections, which could make the process more painful.

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Inmates say the state prison system should not be allowed to extend the expiration dates of its execution drugs. They claim this practice violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

#nunyas news

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