Maine Prisons Continue to House the Nation's Mentally Ill

There's much to be said about this. It's why I link to a news feed on prison reform. For now I will only say that Johnny Okie, a profoundly ill young man, was convicted quickly yesterday by a jury of his peers.

According to a Frontline documentary, a quarter (500,000) of the 2 million Americans in prison are mentally ill with 16 percent (320,000) classed as severely mentally ill. Make that 320,001. A young man who was arguably difficult and a drug abuser was driven to murder a friend and his father by insufficiently treated schizophrenia. He will spend the rest of his life in the Maine prison system. Other than adding him to the list of the suffering who are out of sight, out of mind, how is this in any way a good idea?

I cannot begin to say how disappointed I am in my fellow Mainers, nor how sad I am for his mother, Karen.

The whole public broadcasting documentary, "The New Asylums," can be seen online.

On Stenography

The coverage of our neighbor Johnny Okie's trial has been grim and lazy in both the local paper and the larger ones. Except for this confusing article in the KJ today, this tragic story has consisted of recounting what happens in the courtroom. Of course this is part of the story.

It's like day by day play by play for a sport, except that people probably know the rules of the sports they watch. Court is different. Without serious, professional attention to context and analysis of court procedure and state law, a play by play article for this kind of trial is destined to be crap. Trouble is, this kind of understanding takes hundreds of hours and reliable sources.

Parachuting in, landing in a community and trying to cover a story cold, as Joel Elliot does in the KJ article linked above, is bound to fail because the reporter has only a slight chance of quickly finding people who are both willing and able to be quoted who have useful and true information.

Two years ago Stephen Colbert called out the Washington Press Corps for its stenographic skills, so it's unsurprising that we in the hinterlands have the same problem. [n.b. the Lincoln County News editorial this week is especially to be avoided. My father the 40-year English teacher would have bled red ink all over it, complaining bitterly of vague generalities and painful banality.]

A couple essential questions I want answered, yet no one, as far as I can tell has broached:

I wish someone could explain why is this trial is taking up taxpayers' money, money that could be better spent on mental health training and care for public safety workers.

Why did six days pass and a second murder before the police effectively intervened?

My bias is upfront. John Okie was a friend. He died in a manner so tragic most of us cannot comprehend it. Karen Okie is a friend. Though I've come up short in every measure of that word, the least I can do is lobby for decent reporting of these terrible days.

A Fragile Mind Meets Blunt Object In Court

Weighted words dominated most press accounts of Johnny Okie’s first trial day Monday. AJ Higgins at MPBN called him a college dropout; the MaineToday site has him “butchering” his victims. What is happening to journalism when we have to go to the television, WCSH6 for a reasoned account of what happened?

There one could find that his lawyers signal that they will have to bludgeon the jury with the level and duration of his mental illness. Apparently it is not enough that Johnny and his family suffered this tragedy for the better part of a decade. He must be shown to have been deeply ill in the days leading up to the murders. A lawyer I know says, “Courts don’t do nuance.”

Saturday I’ll attend the annual party in Wiscasset where Johnny’s father, John Okie, told me five or six years ago how ill Johnny was, how worried John and his wife Karen were, and described the measures they were taking to address Johnny’s behavior.

That fall John and Karen enrolled Johnny in Kents Hill, a prep school northwest of Augusta. They drove to school better than an hour every weekend and, as I recall, sometimes during the workweek. I remember thinking how they passed my house every time and wished they would stop in, knowing well that their errand proved too serious for a chat and a cookie. Their lives were consumed by Johnny’s mental illness, his behavior and his education.

I’m guessing John felt comfortable talking with me about mental illness because he had been privy to our family’s experience with my dad’s bipolar disorder and had seen us survive relatively unscathed. John may have said schizophrenia, I don’t remember, but I know that John and Karen felt burdened by not knowing whether they were doing the right thing.

John Okie had been a family friend since my parents, sister and I moved to Wiscasset in 1972. I worked as a clerk in a pottery/used bookshop he and Peter Green shared on Main Street. John lived across the street. In those early days, John’s dog Wally and my sister’s used to disappear on days long jaunts, probably running deer, and come back gimpy and whipped by brambles.

That horrible summer day in ’07 when it became clear that John had been killed, I had just started a job as assistant newspaper editor for the Lincoln County News. During those early days in the newsroom we didn’t know Johnny’s connection to Aleigh and only had rumors about his whereabouts the night John was killed. As the police let us in on the facts, they confounded us. Why had Johnny been free for six days? How was the accident on the Wiscasset Bridge in the days before Aleigh’s death connected? What clues did it offer to Johnny’s deteriorating condition?

Now that nearly a year and a half has gone by, I believe the exercise taking place in court and in the press this week and next is a kind of torture for all concerned with no redeeming feature.

The trial certainly gives the pro-death penalty contingent something to rant about—hardly a productive use of taxpayer dollars. Johnny is nightmarishly ill and has been for at least half his life. Punishment will make no difference to him and I have to believe Aleigh Mills’ parents cannot have vengeance on their minds, despite the brutality of their daughter’s end.

If there is any justice this young man will live in a hospital for the rest of his life, safe in a place where he can hurt no one else, medicated against the demons that led him to kill those he loved.