Jail Hell

On March 15, Cissy Aikins and her husband, Mike, went to visit her brother at the Montgomery County Jail in Conroe. James Henry Mitchell had been brought in two nights before on a warrant for a parole violation. They recall he had been coherent and acted normal, showing no signs of the distress that was to follow. They talked about making sure his house was locked, and about possibly selling his big-screen TV.

The following day Mitchell’s mother, Connie Horton, came by the jail to see her son. She, too, recalls he was in “perfect health.” He asked her about making sure his bills got paid.

Two days later, Mitchell’s boss, Donald Smith, received a call at 10:24 p.m. He said the frantic, desperate voice was Mitchell’s. “He told me they’d been in there shocking him and they were fixing to come in with clubs and beat him,” says Smith. Spooked, he quickly hung up and dialed the jail. Officers assured him that nothing like that was going on. Forty minutes later, Smith received a call back. It was a jail deputy, who asked him if there was any reason Mitchell would be incoherent or disoriented and told him that guards would move him to a cell where they could monitor him more closely.

“I know him well enough to know there had to be something going on to make him call me like that,” says Smith, who owns an auto repair garage in north Houston. The 67-year-old was a longtime friend of the family and had known Mitchell, 43, since his birth. He remembers him as “a pretty good boy,” a hard worker and a jack-of-all-trades who had mastered not only car mechanics but plumbing, electrical work and carpentry.

When the Aikins couple came by the next day, he told them about the calls. “I didn’t think too much about it,” says Mike, Mitchell’s brother-in-law. “You think your loved one’s in jail — you don’t think about that,” he says, shuddering about what they would later discover. “You don’t want to think about that.”

The following Saturday morning, Mike and Cissy Aikins attempted to see Mitchell, but deputies wouldn’t let them. According to a shift log, Sergeant Rocky Quertermous told them that Mitchell was “detoxing” at the time. The next day Mitchell’s mother was also turned away from the jail with the explanation that Mitchell felt too wobbly to walk. Another officer wrote in the shift log, “He should be better by next weekend.”

Some 15 hours later, a battered, withered James Henry Mitchell was pronounced dead.

Mitchell, a twice-married father of four, may have been a pretty good boy according to Smith, but his criminal record reveals a checkered past. Still, the family believes Mitchell never should have been in jail in the first place — at least not this time.

In 1980, Mitchell was convicted of fatally stabbing a man and was sentenced to ten years’ probation. His family contends he was being attacked and acted in self-defense. A 1984 burglary conviction netted him 20 years in prison. After his parole, a 1994 DWI sent him back behind bars for five years. Relatives say that after that, he never drank again. (Mitchell did take medication for a heart condition and, later, pain relievers as a result of a traffic accident.)

Nonetheless, in January of this year, a Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy arrested Mitchell for allegedly driving drunk; he was on his way to get a jug of milk around midnight, his sister says. Some two weeks later, the Texas Department of Public Safety sent him a letter reinstating his suspended driver’s license with an acknowledgement he had passed his Breathalyzer test. “We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused,” the letter notes.

Aikins says they faxed a copy of that letter to his parole officer in Conroe and confirmed later that everything was all right. (Because of his earlier convictions, he was still on parole until 2011.) Mitchell’s lawyer, Mark Phillips, says no charges had been filed regarding the January traffic stop, although that incident prompted the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to issue a warrant on March 11 for parole violation. Two nights later, on a tip that Mitchell was driving drunk (which turned out false), a Montgomery County deputy pulled him over and hauled him in on the TDCJ warrant.

Aikins claims the police had also stopped him at other times in the past. “He just thought this was another time they were messing with him,” she says.

Regardless of what brought him into the county jail, his relatives are still trying to find the answers to why Mitchell’s incarceration would turn into his death sentence.

The autopsy reports that the cause of his “natural death” was heart disease, complicated by hepatitis. It notes blood on his mouth, neck and chest, but states there was “no sign of injury.” Yet photographs from the jail scene and autopsy reveal more grisly detail: discolored contusions on his head, a sliced chin, swollen eyes streaked with dried blood, a gaping sore on his knee, scabby cuts on his toes, blackened elbows, skin torn from his buttocks, a splotchy, coffee-colored abrasion on his cheek and a craggy slash across his right wrist. Aikins says that at the funeral she touched him just beyond the hairline and her fingers caved in to a sickening, puttylike divot, which she believes did not come from the autopsy work.

The 120 photographs, which Aikins received through an open records request, do not follow sequential numbering, as two dozen appear to be missing from the batch. And, as thoroughly as they document the rest of his bruised body, no photographs appear to capture the condition of his back at the time of death.

The official report also notes that the “deceased was not cooperative with medical personnel and was restrained due to psycho and combative nature,” although a mental disability and suicide screening at the time of Mitchell’s booking gave him a clean bill of psychological health. Reviewing his record, one official from TDCJ said it indicated an “exemplary inmate.”

A videotape made by the jailers and dated March 21 — three days before his death — shows Mitchell shivering and stuttering incoherently, appearing to be in an almost retarded state, as he is fed bites of a sandwich. In a statement written for investigators, nurse Jackie Denise Cox stated that the inmate was oriented normally and “he appeared in good spirits, laughing and joking,” claiming “no medical problems.” Minutes later, she stated, he hauntingly told her: “I’m not really here right now, they killed me last night. I was shot in the head three times and then they poured gasoline on me and set me on fire. I’m not really here.”

Various jail medical reports say that Mitchell was showing signs of DTs, or delirium tremens, because of withdrawal from alcohol, stating that he had “confused, disoriented [and] paranoid ideas” that started five days after being booked. Withdrawal seizures, however, typically kick in within two or three days of the last drink — if Mitchell had indeed imbibed since his last imprisonment. Mitchell also had a blood sugar problem and was always “fiending for Cokes,” as his family put it.

Another inmate reported to investigators he overheard a guard say that Mitchell may have been given the wrong medication.

The family also notes discrepancies in the time of death. An official report puts it at 6:08 a.m. on March 24. Yet a videotape of CPR performed on a lifeless Mitchell shows strange signs, including a camera time of after 7 a.m.

That video also records a bizarre scene: an apparently lackluster emergency medical services crew, indecipherable whispering behind the camera and an oxygen bag that kept being removed from the room for unexplained reasons. A puddle of blood appears to have collected directly underneath the stretcher, separate from the stream of caked blood flowing from his mouth, down the side of the stretcher and across the floor. And despite the flurry of activity, no footprints appear to have tracked what should have been fresh blood.

“I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination this was natural causes,” says attorney J.D. Lambright. “I don’t think that explains the bruising of the ribs, the massive internal bleeding, the cuts.”

Lambright, who was hired by the family, anticipates that a federal civil rights lawsuit will be filed within 30 days. He says several inmates have given statements regarding Mitchell’s death. He would not offer specifics, saying he feared a backlash against those still in jail. Sheriff’s department Detective Michael Landrum and other officers declined to comment, owing to the pending litigation. They referred press inquiries to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, which did not return several phone calls.

Based on the investigative reports, the defense position will likely be that jail personnel did all they could for a delusional Mitchell, and that any wounds and blood were either self-inflicted or the result of his vomiting blood or resisting their efforts to get medical services for him. In one reference in the reports, an officer wrote that Mitchell’s sister said she thought he was abusing prescription drugs — a statement Cissy Aikins hotly denies.

As the investigations continue, Aikins has launched a campaign to find others claiming mistreatment by law enforcement in Montgomery County. She says she’s heard from nearly a dozen alleged victims, but in a culture of fear, anonymity reigns. “People are scared to death up here,” she says. “They want to stay nameless.” Aikins refuses to stay nameless, even though she complains of regular nightmares and other phobias.

“We don’t go anywhere alone,” she says. “I can’t stay in this house by myself alone.”

Rings of cigarette smoke drift up toward her eyes as she gazes out her kitchen window, thinking about it. “That should be my biggest fear, but my biggest fear is who’s going to be their next victim. At this moment it’s happening, and there’s nothing I can do to prevent it.”