OBSERVER INVESTIGATION
An inmate at San Quentin receives a visit from the dentist. In 2005, a California judge called health care at San Quentin "deplorable" but few paid attention until April 2006, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger committed $600 million to improving mental health care in the state's prisons. (photo by REUTERS)
NEWS
HEALTH
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
byJULIA DAHL
Robert Boggon died like an animal. He was beaten, scrubbed raw with a rough bristled brush, stunned with a Taser gun while in the shower, bound in a chair with a pillowcase over his head and left to die inside a cold concrete jail cell in Escambia County, Fla. His crime? Boggon, 63, had a schizophrenic episode inside a Dollar Tree store. On the day he died he hadn't been convicted of a thing.
"Around here, getting sent to the Escambia County Jail is like a death sentence," says Mike LaDoucer, the attorney representing Boggon's estate.
» Read
more
NEXT OBSERVER
- Watch for the Observer's special Washington edition on March 28 with these stories:
- Searching for the new fuel: ethanol
- Voting rights still in limbo in D.C.
- D.C. gets 'F' for disaster readiness
American Observer is produced by the American University