Thomas Morrison’s death should not be in vain
Thomas Morrison was 42 when he died. The toxicology report showed codeine toxicity: he’d overdosed. Just as those who knew him feared he would.
Not intentionally, let’s be clear. While there has yet to be a determination from the coroner, everyone who knew Thomas worried he couldn’t manage his medication. They worried he would accidentally take too much. And so, it appears, he did.
Thomas Morrison was one of tens of thousands of New Zealanders with FASD – Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder – and among the many with FASD who we fail because we do nothing to help them. Even though their brain damage was inflicted before they were even born. It doesn’t get much more innocent than that.
But we treat them as though it was their fault: Ministry of Health policy specifically excludes people with FASD from accessing support services, wrongly describing it as ‘‘behavioural’’ instead of what it is – a disability caused by brain damage.
The effect on Thomas Morrison of being left to fend largely for himself was, as is so often the case, a life spent in and out of jail. His criminal history spans dozens of pages.
Most recently, he was in Spring Hill Prison, awaiting sentencing for breaking into a neighbour’s place while zonked out on zopiclone and whisky. The neighbour found him in their bathroom. Thomas said he didn’t even remember being there.
His lawyer, Leah Davison of the Public Defence Service, knew Thomas very well and often went well beyond the call of duty. She would talk on the phone with him in prison almost daily, sometimes twice daily.
‘‘I wanted to give him hope,’’ she told us in an interview for the Stuff Circuit documentary Disordered.
Unfortunately for Thomas, Leah Davison was in hospital, unable to take his call when he was released from prison last September.
So he called me. He had my number because I’d been talking to his grandfather about our plans for investigating FASD.
It was good to hear Thomas’s voice; I’d heard and read so much about him.
Parole Board decisions (pre-diagnosis), including one which said: ‘‘His attitude is poor in the unit. He is not prepared to acknowledge that.’’
The lengthy 2019 assessment from neuropsychologist Dr Valerie McGinn formally diagnosing Thomas with FASD: ‘‘Even at this late age a settled life can be achieved for Thomas with FASD-informed disability services.’’
A judge’s sentencing notes, explaining Thomas would forget to report for probation. The service’s response was to make him report twice a week, although he had no money for transport to get to the increased number of appointments.
When Thomas rang at 10pm the night after he got out of jail, he was speaking rapid-fire, his voice a bit slurred.
He said he planned to head to Blenheim the next day, to retrieve property he’d left at a backpackers’ there.
When I suggested his plan might be unwise because it might put him in breach – yet again – of his release conditions, which might risk him being sent back to jail, he said he was going anyway.
I tried to dissuade him, working through the maths of the cost of getting there, accommodation, food, getting back, versus the cost of having his things sent to him.
He didn’t want to hear a word of it; he was adamant he needed to go there himself.
It was a glimpse into his thought processes, his inability to think through consequences, his assuredness he was right.
He didn’t end up making the trip. Probably something else came up; such is the nature of FASD and impulsivity.
But Thomas Morrison should not have needed to have that conversation with a journalist. I’m not qualified to advise him on what he should or shouldn’t have done with his life.
Prior to Thomas’s release from prison, lawyer Leah Davison and Dr McGinn had fought hard to get proper support put in place for him.
And at sentencing last September, Judge Barbara Morris supported those pleas.
She cited the probation report saying
Thomas Morrison came out of prison, again, and lived his life the way he always had: haphazardly, impulsively. A week later he was dead.
Thomas’s offending reflected a health system which had not taken sufficient steps to support people like him.
She said his ongoing offending was unfortunately a by-product of his medical condition and that, with a failed health response, he had instead been dealt with by the justice system for the past 20 years.
‘‘It is the health providers that need to come to assist you,’’ she said.
Judge Morris wanted to see him supported into accommodation and employment; to have a ‘‘key worker’’ in place to help him navigate life, ‘‘when it gets too hard… including, importantly, taking your medication’’.
With time already served, Thomas Morrison was released from prison the next day.
But nothing of what the judge asked for was in place. No support had been set up, even though documentation seen by Stuff Circuit shows those requests had been made to the DHB for weeks – fervently in the days leading up to his release.
Thomas Morrison came out of prison, again, and lived his life the way he always had: haphazardly, impulsively.
A week later he was dead.
In an envelope at his Kawerau home, Thomas’s grandfather keeps a handful of letters and cards that arrived in the days afterwards.
Among them, a letter from Judge Morris. She wrote that she wanted him to know Thomas’s difficulties came not from a bad place, but a sad, invisible, and poorlyunderstood place that had blighted his life.
She acknowledged it must have been hard coping with Thomas’s significant medical problem with little support. She wrote that Thomas tried his best, and was often motivated by his love for his granddad.
In her interview for Disordered, Thomas’s lawyer Leah Davison told us his death was a collective failure, and that therefore it was a collective responsibility to ensure there were not any more such failures.
She made a fair point.
We have been in denial for decades about the incidence and effect of FASD in Aotearoa.
We should learn something from Thomas Morrison’s life, and his death.
Disordered was made with the support of NZ on Air. You can watch it at stuff.co.nz/disordered