DeFriest: Mental Illness Behind Bars

Mark DeFriest - a.k.a. "The Houdini of Florida", "Wendy the Punk" and "Wizard" -- has played many roles in order to survive the worst that American prison life has to offer. Yet at the beginning of his incarceration, it was not even clear whether he belonged in prison at all.

In the early 1980s, 5 of 6 court appointed psychiatrists agreed that Mark was incompetent to be sentenced -- citing symptoms of schizophrenia and even autism -- so he was sent to a mental hospital. Mark's future hinged on his escape from that hospital, an event that changed the course of his life and launched him on a path of punishment instead of treatment. Today, almost 30 years later, Mark is one of 200,000 mentally ill prisoners behind bars in America. Like many of them, Mark has never received treatment, has rarely been medicated and is consistently punished for his symptoms.

As a filmmaker and now someone who counts himself a friend to Mark DeFriest, I have been following his story for almost 8 years, along the way uncovering the twisted path that led to the windowless solitary cell where he resides today. I learned of Mark in 2001 while researching a documentary that accompanied the Human Rights Watch report, No Escape Prison Rape in America. Back then, my film on Rodney Hulin - who had been raped repeatedly and eventually committed suicide in Texas prison - came to stand for the estimated 20% of US prisoners subjected to that kind of abuse. Mark's story is not so different from Rodney's, as Mark too was a victim of rape and abuse. But Mark's case is more complicated owing to his own role in ostracizing his captors. Originally sent to prison for a small property crime, Mark's penchant for Cool Hand Luke style rebellion became legendary within the Florida Department of Corrections and garnered him staggeringly long and brutal sentences despite the protests of court appointed psychiatrists.

Over the years, Mark has evidenced an almost pathological need to outsmart his captors. In the 80s, he used his mechanical gift to become Florida's greatest escape artist, "Houdini." But the system didn't appreciate his talents nor the mania and paranoia that drove him on. After seven escapes, mentally competent or incompetent, it didn't matter: jail guards tortured him in retaliation. Court transcripts reveal that after weeks of abuse following his final jailbreak, Mark pled guilty to a life sentence just to get a warm bed and a promised visit with his wife.

Sentenced to Florida State Prison for 3 years to Life and 45 years, respectively, officials saw fit to build him a windowless, "escape-proof" cell. Then to add insult to injury, they allowed him to be repeatedly gang raped. Like Rodney Hulin, Mark couldn't live with the shame of rape, but instead of suicide he made a Faustian bargain to survive, dissociating from his own identity to take on the role of "Wendy", a flamboyant transvestite who took the pain of abuse and made it pleasure. In so doing, Wendy bought Mark yet another escape. And it's that endless cycle of escape and capture that has continued on in one form or another for 28 years, time passing, one day to the next, during excruciatingly long stays in the most draconian conditions American prisons have to offer: supermax units offering 23/7 lockdown in a box.

A Critical Moment

Today, the question begs: should Mark still be in prison? The fact is he never had a jury trial. He pled guilty every time he was caught, a sign many doctors took of incompetence. As prisoners who committed far worse crimes have been freed, Mark's cyclical mental breakdowns have cost him all his 'gain time' towards parole. His present fate is to serve his entire sentence, release date December 18, 2035...

Mark's only hope is a clemency petition that his elderly wife and a small town lawyer are pursuing on his behalf. In the next few months, they will introduce new evidence to the Florida Parole Commission relating to Mark's mental competence, in the hope that the commission will grant them an audience with Governor Crist. As we follow their efforts to be heard - through a documentary and accompanying serialized blog - the story will become a de facto courtroom where the facts of Mark's case are finally laid out for an audience to hear.

With that knowledge, Mark's fate, along with that of thousands of other mentally ill inmates, will be in our hands.

Comments

[columbusweb]

i once had to visit my 6'4", 260lb, mentally ill daddy in jail to tell him that if he wanted to get out, he had to tell the man i was sending to visit him that he was going to hurt someone. this was one of the scariest things i ever had to do, being as my dad thought he was a famous WWF wrestler at the time. to get transferred for treatment, my father needed to display signs of being a 'danger to himself or others' to the court psychologist. the treatment? a meager 3 days of observation. it was a looooooong year.
this is a tough issue on many fronts. prison or jail is NOT where a mentally ill person should be, for his/her sake, and for the safety of others. it sets mentally ill persons up to become and/or create the victims of more crime.
in the case in this post, i worry about his elderly wife or others who will have to care for him if he gets out (again, agreeing that prison is not the proper place for him). our mental health system is sadly, deeply lacking in adequate treatment and support services both for the patient, and for the persons who must take on the dangerous job of caring for the mentally ill.
this hits so very close to home for me, and i'm sure, many others. my heartfelt thanks to you for the needed attention to it, Gabriel.

[escobar]

Ron Reagan was instrumental in closing the mental institutions and turning disturbed people onto the street.
What is a person with problems going to do but find themselves in trouble.
Many homeless have mental problems and cannot fend for themselves.
Prisons now house these unfortunate people.
In the USA mental ilness is a crime.

[WilliePilgrim]

If the question is "should Mark be in our modern prison system" I think the answer will always be flawed because the question's premise is that our modern prison system is OK except the mentally ill are in there. In fact the mentally ill might need to be institutionalized, but as long as we see prison justified as a form of enlightened and humane punishment for crime as well as protecting us by being a deterrent to crime we are failing to understand both human nature and the history of the penal system.
Public humiliation and physical hardship capable of causing discomfort, done under a doctors supervision to see that no permanent harm results, would be over quickly, be equally effective for rich and poor, send a message to the people, whom if they disagree would know to change the system, and it would genuinely deter future crime.
Hiding convicted criminals away from our awareness engenders terrible abuses such as Mark's and a million others exemplify.

[haramagoti]

there should be no pause to his release, and the list of guards, judges and other relevant public officials perpetuating these crimes against these extremely vulnerable citizens must be made public, we should demand no less

[escobar]

He needed help, not punnishment.
He may well be best kept in some form of instutitution, but certainly not prison.
He has been sentenced to, "Hell on Earth".
His story is heartbreaking.
He is far from alone.

[AntiRethuglican]

America--Greatest country in the world??????? Right!

[nezumi]

Great post, as great as the tragedy it describes. When the Iraq war broke out I already thought, why should American soldiers treat prisoners of war better than their own felons? The situation in national prisons made Abu Ghureib inevitable, in a sense.

[ChiDad]

I work in they system (court side) and things are changing within the court system. The change needs to leap ahead and be a system change (court, jail, prison, etc) More attorneys and judges are becoming educated about mental illness. We must divert (deferred prosecution) people with mental illness out of the system from the begining. Police departments have Crisis Intervention Teams that can stop this nightmare and inhumanity before it begins. The jail and prison system should be sued for its conditions and forced by federal authorities to provide top notch mental health care. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to change the trajectory of people like Mark. Community mental health needs FUNDING NOW!!! and must move up in priorty for our public health system. People with mental illness who are in the court system NEED HOUSING and discrimination against them (from mental health providers) because they are felons must stop also.

[XCITIZEN]

Thanks for this post, Gabriel. The rape of prisoners and the treatment of the mentally ill both in and out of the prison system in this country is a human rights violation of unimaginable proportions. I pray to God that we are coming closer to an era when we can begin to work on changing this country into a place where human rights prevail.

[darthdarcy]

Ironic that Republicans who are so against gay rights and practices at the same time have contributed to the American prison system being hotbed and enclaves of forced sodomy..the Evangelists are mute to this issue as well...

It's due to Reagan that our prisons replaced mental health institutions for those who are, as this poor soul psychologically disturbed ad in need of treatment and medication...a national disgrace and crime against humanity..!

[janinei]

Yes, thank you Ronnie Reagan. I live in California, and we see the effects of Ronnie's compassionate Conservatism every day. It is so sad to see those that we should take care of on the streets, barely surviving!