Old masks, lax spacing: Detainee talks about COVID-19 jail risks
Ronald Rhyne, 51, has been in the Shelby County Jail since last September on a charge of aggravated robbery — a predicament that he says resulted when a dispute with a former business partner went awry.
That business partner, he said, has since died from diabetes. But each day, Rhyne worries that he might meet that same fate from COVID-19.
“One time, when they took us to court, we were like 30-, 40-deep in the tank,” said Rhyne, who suffers from a heart condition and high blood pressure — a malady that early research shows may predispose people to COVID-19 and dying from it.
“They’re bringing people in from the outside that they aren’t quarantining … some are coming right off the streets. …
“I had to wear the same paper mask for two months.”
What Rhyne described mirrors the concerns that Federal Judge Sheryl H. Lipman recently acknowledged in a class-action lawsuit brought by detainees at high risk of contracting COVID-19. Such problems include a lack of testing, social distancing and isolation and quarantine measures.
The failure to consider detainees’ medical conditions when making bond decisions — Rhyne’s bond is $100,000 — is also a problem, as are continued detentions based on past offenses, not on whether detainees are a flight risk, she said.
Lipman, however, gave the jail a chance to fix what she called its “public health lapses,” when she denied the release of detainees like Rhyne who are medically vulnerable to contracting COVID-19.
Problem is, the time it may take the jail to fix its lapses may not be in time to save some detainees from succumbing to them.
And that thought not only keeps Rhyne up at night, but his aunts — Linda Kee and Dianne Thierry — up as well.
Rhyne, who struggled with alcoholism and other issues nearly 10 years ago, said he had managed to build himself a trucking business before criminal charges once again ensnared him in the system he had sought to escape.
Last year, after a falling-out with a business partner, Rhyne and his daughter got into a confrontation with the man’s secretary, which led to his daughter being charged with assaulting the woman and him being charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary — a charge that was dropped for lack of probable cause.
He has relied on Kee and Thierry to stand in the gap as he awaits trial.
“He (Rhyne) made some mistakes, but that doesn’t mean he should be condemned to death,” Kee said. “We worry about his well-being and his health, as well as whether he’s going to get a fair trial.”
For Kee and Thierry, that has not only meant trying to get Rhyne a reliable attorney — Kee said one decided that he didn’t want to come to the jail to see Rhyne because of his own fears of catching COVID-19 — but bringing masks to the jail for him.
They also said they’ve seen the jail’s COVID-19 shortcomings firsthand.
“I had to pick up the pen to put money on his books, and I look around for hand sanitizer (to use after touching the pen) and they told me they didn’t have any,” Kee said. “He also had to put a sock over the phone to talk because there was no sanitizer for the phone.
“All of that makes me worry about his health and him dying. His mother died three years ago, so we tried to pick up and help with Ron.”
Yet what Rhyne’s plight — and the plight of other inmates — shows is how so many lives have been put in the crosshairs of this pandemic.
There’s Lipman, who is giving the jail time to fix its problems, arguably so she doesn’t risk the lives of people in the community by allowing detainees to be released who might go out and commit more crimes.
There are detainees like Rhyne, who worry about COVID-19 killing them before they can get out and try to rebuild their lives.
Then there’s Kee and Thierry, who are trying to stay true to their dead sister by looking out for her son — and praying that the deadly virus doesn’t kill him before he can turn his life around. “I was his babysitter, and so no one wants to see anyone down, or wants to see anyone beat down,” Thierry said. “It’s really heavy on our hearts that he’s there, but right now, there’s not a voice for him.
“We know they’re inmates, but they’re human.”
The jail shouldn’t become the new death row. Especially when the majority of people there haven’t been convicted of anything, much less murder.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee at 901568-3281, tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or follow her on Twitter @tonyaajw.