By Paul McEnroe
Star Tribune
HENNEPIN COUNTY, Minn. — Hennepin County has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit by a mentally ill inmate who stabbed himself in both eyes last year after being held in the county jail for 40 days without proper psychiatric care.
The settlement is believed to be the largest for medical neglect of an inmate in a Minnesota jail or prison. The terms are expected to be formally approved by U.S. Magistrate Arthur Boylan next week, according to a source with direct knowledge of the case. The County Board of commissioners was briefed on the terms last week in a closed-door meeting. Attorneys for Schuler and the county declined to comment pending Boylan’s hearing.
Michael Schuler, who had a long history of mental illness and self-inflicted wounds, was arrested in March 2012 for missing a court date and used a pencil to stab himself in his cell two months later.
Since then, his case has been cited by criminal justice and mental health authorities as an example of the way Minnesota has criminalized mental illness, with hundreds of people winding up in county jails for even basic misdemeanors rather than being sent into residential psychiatric care. On a typical day, the Hennepin County jail holds 100 to 200 inmates with serious psychiatric disorders — sometimes one quarter of the overall inmate population — and some languish in jail for months, according to a Star Tribune investigation published in September.
Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, who has acknowledged that the jail is not an appropriate place for the mentally ill to be treated, declined to comment on the case.
Full story: Hennepin County will pay $1M to settle inmate’s neglect claim