Deaf Man Left In Jail For Two Years After Charges Dropped Is Freed With Apology

Jet, Sept 24, 2001

A deaf and mentally ill Black man who spent two years in a District of Columbia jail after his misdemeanor charges had been dropped said he was ignored, mistreated and kept in isolation.

Joseph Heard was released from jail on August 13th and voluntarily was taken to a mental hospital after officials at the jail discovered the error and retrieved his case file from storage.

"The fact that I had no communication whatsoever-the isolation was the hardest thing to deal with," said Heard, through an American Sign Language interpreter at St. Elizabeths Hospital Chapel. "TV kept me going, and I kept the hope that I would be free one day."

The confusion started in 1999, when police took Heard to jail rather than back to St. Elizabeths after his case for allegedly trespassing on George Washington University property was dismissed in Superior Court.

Then, a series of bureaucratic foul-ups-court documents that were supposed to arrive at the jail, but never did, no one to follow-up to make sure that he was released, and then his file was archived after it was mislabeled inactive-kept Heard, 42, in a solitary cell in the jail's mental-health unit for nearly two years. He finally left the jail and was sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital after corrections officials retrieved his case file from storage and discovered the error.

The city's corrections director has accepted responsibility for the wrongful imprisonment.

During a news conference, Heard, who is unable to speak or hear, used sign language to describe feelings of anger, frustration and loneliness during the 22 months he spent in a Washington, D.C., jail.

Heard, who's been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, told reporters through an interpreter his written pleas for help were routinely ignored.

(Interpreter): "I tried to communicate and write notes and tell them that I'm innocent. The officers would look at the piece of paper and ignore it."

"Joe was lost in the system," said W. Thomas Stovall, a lawyer helping investigate the case for Heard. "The only thing we have said to the Department of Corrections is that they are to stay away from our client."