Plan to aid man falters
Mentally ill inmate remains in jail after judge OK’d move to a state hospital
Fifth in an occasional series
It was a meeting they had hoped not to need.
A judge, two prosecutors and a Fort Bend County mental health probation supervisor were all waiting when Overzenia Ojuri walked into the courtroom.
For the second time since her troubled client, Warren Muldrow, 22, had arrived back in custody, a plan to get him out of jail and into treatment had failed.
Warren had been locked up for more than seven weeks now in the Fort Bend County Jail for violating probation after he pleaded guilty in May to threatening law enforcement.
All those in court thought he needed to be someplace that could handle the drug abuse and mental illness that had sent him cycling in and out of hospitals and jails for years. Being back in custody now may have been keeping him off the streets, but it wasn’t helping him improve.
Since the beginning of August, the group had searched for a solution. They learned that a state-funded facility for probationers in Lubbock, where they decided to try to send him, rejected Warren last week.
So they ordered an emergency behavorial health assessment on Thursday and, when it came back, hoped it would trigger an immediate state psychiatric hospital admission.
But here they were, just before 1 p.m. on Monday in Fort Bend’s 240th district court, regrouping. Warren remained in jail, not the hospital.
“OK, Judge, so we have a very precarious situation here,” said Ojuri, a mental health public defender, approaching the bench. Things were precarious indeed. The outside evaluation on Thursday, Ojuri revealed, found that Warren was suicidal. That should have been grounds for a transfer, the attorney believed, but officials at the county jail had told her they weren’t authorized to release him.
The jail was a bureaucracy and had not, the county sheriff ’s chief deputy says, received instruction from the evaluating agency, or any other authority, to move him. So Warren remained in county custody over the weekend.
Mom: ‘I’m sick as can be’
Judge Chad Bridges seemed confused, since all had agreed late last week that a state hospital was the most appropriate place for Warren. “Wasn’t that the plan when we left here on Thursday?” he asked. It was. Ojuri was as surprised as the judge when she found out early Monday morning that her client was still in jail. And Warren’s mother, Shelia Muldrow — she was stunned when Ojuri gave her the news that her son wasn’t in the hospital.
“I’m sick as can be, you know?” said Shelia, who’d spent more time on the mental health care roller coaster than most could imagine. “It’s like, have you guys never done this before?”
There were, however, other ways to try to get Warren admitted, Ojuri explained in court. They could try to get a civil commitment, or evaluate Warren again for competency, or release him on a personal recognizance bond, meaning he would be free on a promise to show up in court as instructed.
The first two would be slower and procedural. With the third, Ojuri warned, “we’ll have another series of problems.”
Even for Ojuri, who was the chief of the mental health division of the public defender’s office, the mental health system presented a puzzle.
Bridges turned to Anthony Mayshack, a probation supervisor for mental health cases.
“Talk to me, give me some options,” Bridges said.
Warren needed to be stabilized before they sent him anywhere, Mayshack explained. If he went now to the state substance abuse treatment program where they hoped he would evenutally land, Mayshack said, “We would be back at square one.”
The state hospital still seemed like the best opportunity.
Ojuri reiterated her frustration that Warren hadn’t been sent automatically after his evaluation.
“I think nobody knew what to do, so nobody did anything,” she said.
The idea arose for Bridges to sign an order to send Warren to the hospital.
“That’s simple enough,” Bridges said.
The judge asked the prosecutors what they thought. Alison Gottlieb, who came to help Chris DeLozier on the case, said she believed an order could be drawn up for Warren to be released on a personal recognizance bond that required transportation by sheriff ’s deputies to the hospital and then, once his treatment was complete, back to jail again.
Which raised a new set of questions: What would they do when Warren got back from the hospital, his bipolar disorder stabilized for the moment? Would he have to sit around in jail again waiting to get into drug treatment? Would his mental state deteriorate?
Bridges had the authority to modify Warren’s probation to include a stay at the drug rehabilitation facility, but Ojuri didn’t want Warren to go without hearing from the judge what was going on.
“He needs to understand procedurally what’s happening,” Ojuri said.
Getting process rolling again
Still, if Warren came back to jail after being stabilized at the hospital, it could take four weeks to get him into the next program, Mayshack said.
“What plan do we have if he comes back here and we’re waiting on a bed at (the program)?” Bridges asked.
They had to trust the jail staff to offer him treatment and encourage it, Ojuri said. He could transfer into mental health court but it wouldn’t make a difference, said Bob Yack, a third prosecutor, who entered the conversation part-way through. It would be up to jailers — and Warren himself — whether he took his medications. The judge inhaled, then exhaled. “We’ll revisit that,” he said. In the meantime, Bridges would await the order to sign to get the process rolling again to send Warren to a hospital — though they had no idea to which.
“Tomorrow is better than Wednesday, which is better than Thursday,” Bridges said.
With that, at 1:18 p.m., a new plan — one that this time seven people helped devise — was set in motion.