Andrew Holland, 36, died on January 22 after being shackled to a chair for 46 hours while an inmate at a California jail
The family of a schizophrenic jail inmate who died after being strapped to a chair while naked for two days has been awarded $5million in a legal settlement.
Andrew Holland, 36, died on January 22 after he was shackled to a chair inside a glass-fronted cell, left to sit in his own waste, for 46 hours while an inmate at San Luis Obispo County jail in California.
Holland, who had schizophrenia, was stripped naked, had his face covered with a mask and had a helmet strapped to his head. Guards had draped a blanket across his lap, but it slipped off, exposing his naked body to anybody that walked past the cell.
His arms and legs were tied to the chair he was forced to sit in and he was deprived of any substantial food and drink.
Forty six hours after his ordeal began, Holland was finally untied, moved to another cell and left on his own.
Holland stopped breathing 40 minutes later and died. The sheriff-coroner said that he died from a pulmonary embolism.
Holland’s family had their own autopsy conducted, which indicated that the embolism was likely due to deep vein thrombosis, caused by a blood clot in his leg, which developed due to the extended amount of time he wasn’t allowed to move while strapped to the chair.
Holland’s death resulted in a $5million legal settlement awarded to his family, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Holland was sent to jail in September 2015 following a public disturbance in a city park. While imprisoned, he was charged with attempting to headbutt guards.
In January, a judge ordered that Holland be sent for evaluation at a psychiatric facility to make sure that he was competent for trial, but it turned out that he was never transferred from the jail.
Holland (pictured with his father, Carty, left) suffered from schizophrenia and had been in jail since his arrest in September 2015
Guards instead put him in isolation for 10 days and then restrained him in the chair once they saw that he kept hitting himself in the head and face.
According to the LA Times, chair restraint tends to be capped at a two hour period, but the Sheriff’s Department policy technically allows guards to use the restraint method for up to 16 hours at a time.
No explanation was provided for why Holland was kept in restraints for 46 hours.
An FBI spokeswoman told the LA Times that federal agents have launched a civil rights investigation into the San Luis Obispo county’s jail following Holland’s death — one of three that had occurred in the jail over a nine month period.
County authorities declined to comment on Holland’s situation, but said in a statement that he suffered from ‘a level of mental illness that could not be adequately addressed in county jail.’
The sheriff and county mental health director said that the county’s psychiatric facility told guards there wasn’t any room for Holland, despite the fact that a bed had opened up, and admitted that they did not medicate Holland even though a court order allowed them to involuntarily medicate him.
It’s said that about 260 of the jail’s 600 inmates are being treated for mental illness.
Holland’s parents, Sharon and Carty, said that their son’s mental health declined while he was in jail because he did not have adequate care and they were not allowed to visit him or pay for him to receive the medications that he required.
While preparing to file a lawsuit, Holland’s parents were able to watch the surveillance footage that captured the last two days of their son’s life, at which point they saw how badly he had been treated by the guards while he was restrained.
Holland (with his mother, Sharon) was supposed to be transferred to a psychiatric facility for evaluation prior to his death, but instead was placed in isolation and restraints at the jail
‘Those images are always going to be with me,’ Sharon Holland said, talking about the way he was strapped to the chair as people walked by without trying to help her son.
‘And the very strange thing is,’ she added, ‘because I hadn’t seen him in so long, in some ways, even those images are dear.’
Rather than wait for the Hollands to take the county to court, San Luis Obispo county offered the $5million settlement, which is said to be the most money paid out in the state’s history for a pre-litigation jail settlement.
Following Holland’s death, the county said that they had made ‘sweeping changes’ to the way they handle mentally ill inmates.
The restraint chair has been abandoned and it’s no longer allowed for inmates to spent more than 72 hours in isolation cells. Additionally, the county has made it a smoother process to move inmates to psychiatric facilities and enhanced guard training.