One Day to Life
After getting arrested two decades ago, Bill Sutherland was told by his lawyer he’d be free within two years. So why is he still locked up in a psychiatric hospital?
Twenty years ago, Bill Sutherland was arrested for a fire he allegedly set inside his Buffalo, New York apartment unit. Police subsequently charged him with multiple offenses, including felony arson and threatening his landlord’s life. Police said Sutherland also threatened his landlord’s life in a voicemail recorded weeks before the fire (Sutherland denied in a Buffalo Daily News article last year that he made the death threats).
Though no one was injured in the fire, police said about 15 people were in the apartment complex at the time.
According to New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, five years in prison is the most common sentence for individuals convicted of the felony arson charge filed against Sutherland.
Last year, Buffalo Daily News columnist Dan Herbeck estimated that, if Sutherland had gone to trial in the criminal courts on the arson charge, he “probably would have been a free man at least 10 years ago.”
Instead, Sutherland turned down the chance to go to trial by pleading “not responsible by reason of mental illness.”
Sutherland’s attorney, Claire Montroy, told Herbeck that he recommended his client take the plea after state appointed psychiatric examiners “reported that (Sutherland) suffered from several delusions, including the belief that (John) Gotti was his father, fears that the devil was trying to invade his apartment and fears that ‘people were following him around’” (Sutherland denied to the Daily News that he suffered from any such delusions).
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Montroy recalled telling Sutherland that “if you can convince these people that you are not a danger to society, you should be out in a year or two.”
Two decades later, Sutherland is still locked up.
“This case, like many others, illustrates the web that people get caught in with pleas of not responsible by mental disease or defect,” another attorney who has represented Sutherland told Herbeck. “Once caught up in that system, it is extremely difficult to escape it.”
Sutherland isn’t the only American who can’t escape the system. In 2017, New York Times Magazine reporter Mac McClelland published a report about “not guilty by reason of insanity” (N.G.R.I.) pleas, “When ‘Not Guilty’ Is a Life Sentence.” McClelland noted that criminal defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity are frequently locked up for lengths of time that “can range from ethically questionable to flagrantly unconstitutional and illegal.” According to a 1983 national study cited by McClelland, N.G.R.I patients “often lost their freedom for twice as long as those actually convicted of the same offense” (The New York State Bar Association uncovered similar patterns last year among New York state residents, like Bill Sutherland, who took “not responsible” pleas).
McClelland also found that, in 2017, more than 10,000 Americans were involuntarily confined to psychiatric hospitals as a result of taking N.G.R.I pleas; that the confinement of N.G.R.I patients had become a “multibillion-dollar segment of domestic detention”; and that no federal agency, national registry or organization monitors or tracks how long, or why, N.G.R.I patients have been incarcerated.
On May 26, Sutherland went to court for the eighth time to appeal for his freedom. In a written decision issued last month, New York state Supreme Court judge Russell P. Buscaglia acknowledged that Sutherland “has not proven to be dangerous” during his two decade confinement.
Despite Sutherland’s non-dangerous behavior while confined, Buscaglia declined to order his release. Instead, the judge sided with Buffalo Psychiatric Center psychiatrist Dr. Kristen Ahrens, who testified at the May hearing that Sutherland should not be released because he “has more work to do with anger management and frustration tolerance.”
Except for occasional unescorted furloughs into town, Sutherland must remain at Buffalo Psychiatric Center until at least October 20, 2021.
If not for Herbeck’s reporting, it’s unlikely Sutherland’s story would have come to light. New York courts typically seal records of individuals who take “not responsible” pleas, ostensibly to protect the patient under medical privacy laws. Herbeck was only able to attend court hearings after Sutherland asked a judge for permission for him to be present.
Since stumbling on Herbeck’s article, I’ve semi-regularly communicated with Sutherland for the past two years, and spoken at length with his attorney. I’ve also interviewed a separate New York N.G.R.I. patient and the family member of a patient. All four individuals described New York State’s criminal psychiatric system as a Kafkaesque maze where patients can be locked up and mistreated for arbitrary and unjust reasons — not unlike America’s civil psychiatric system.
Last year, I helped arrange for Sutherland to publish a first-person account of his N.G.R.I. experience on the webzine Mad In America. After he called me last month to say he lost his latest appeal hearing, and would spend at least another year locked up, I agreed to record part of our conversation and publish it.
This is a transcript of that part of the conversation, very lightly edited for clarity.
Michael Simonson: Tell me about the September 23 court decision, in which a judge denied your appeal to be released from the hospital
Bill Sutherland: My retention expired in October of 2019, but it took until the end of May to have my hearing. The paperwork was into the court July 3rd, the closing written arguments. My independent doctor was of the opinion that I, after exhaustive interviews, didn’t have any form of serious mental illness, that I had some mild personality disorder issues that were best addressed as an outpatient level, that the outpatient care was gonna support my needs and I would be living safely in the community and be able to pursue my life.
The hospital wanted me retained on the grounds that I had not exercised my U3, or unescorted off ground privileges, because they were not granted by Albany, and I hadn’t displayed that I could go out into the community by myself and return safely — even though I had many, many — two years plus — of escorted off grounds, where I would go out in the community with a small group of people and never have any incidents.
The judge, in mid-September, issued a ruling that upheld the retention, and I got a two-year retention effective from October of 2019. But he did grant the U3, or unescorted off ground privileges, which at this time can’t be used because of the COVID restrictions that New York state has, so I can’t even display my abilities just yet.
So it’s kinda sad that I’m gonna be living in this environment for the next couple of years and even if I win, I’m just going to a group home, which is the basement. So it’s the same building and it’s really not much better. The only difference (if I win my next hearing) is my day is my day from like seven in the morning ’til 11 at night. And that’s gonna be a two-year commitment, and the order of conditions is basically for the rest of my life.
So it’s really kind of disheartening that after 22 years, I’m still locked up (Michael’s note: Sutherland has actually been jailed and hospitalized for about 20 years and 6 months, but by the time his retention order expires in October 2021, he will have been detained and confined for closer to 22 years).
MS: So can you tell me what your life has been like since your arrest?
BS: Well, you know, it started out, I believed I was gonna get a six month stay, which is what they had told me when I was in jail. That if I took this plea that I’d be home by Christmas, and if I didn’t cooperate that they’d lose me for two years in forensic hospitals and so I said, “Okay, you know. I’m pretty sure I’m not crazy, so I’ll be happy to go to a place for an evaluation for six months and I’ll get out and put this all behind me.” I knew I was innocent and I just figured the court knew I was innocent and they just would do…you know, they didn’t want it on the books that involuntary intoxication would give you a license to do anything you wanted. So I went along with the program. I got sent to Mid-Hudson, which is a forensic hospital just north of New York City and it wasn’t bad. I mean, in the early 2000’s, these weren’t bad places to live.
You had your own clothes, you had shoelaces and belts. You had headphones with wires and, you know, we just kinda hung out, played cards, smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. But little by little by little, over the years, they’ve taken away luxury items, or items that they consider to be not essential, which is like shoelaces and belts. You know, they think we’re gonna hang ourselves at every turn. They’ve taken away headphone wires and they’ve taken away, just creature comforts. They quit (allowing) smoking, which I guess was a good thing for me. And then I got sent to Rochester, which is a forensic hospital like here (Buffalo Psychiatric Center), just like Mid-Hudson, but it was a different model. It was based on a children’s program called the PEP system, which was a really bad program that I refused to participate in.
So I sat in the day room for just hours on end looking at walls. And that was pretty painful. I mean first they medicated me with a sham of a court order. And the meds almost killed me, and I ended up in the hospital with liver, pancreas and gall bladder problems. I ultimately got off the meds and they could never re-medicate me. I got sent back to Mid-Hudson and that had changed dramatically. Management had changed and it just had become a real prison setting. It was really bad, just really aggressively bad for the patients.
Then I got discharged to Buffalo Psych, a civil hospital, in February of 2015, and I really was excited and happy about all that. I couldn’t wait to be home and get on with my life, and I hit a brick wall. And this hospital has very, very slowly but quite aggressively changed policies from patient-person centered treatment to just draconian lockdown. Locked rooms, locked doors, no wires, no cables. They’ve taken the doors off my closet, they’ve taken the hangers from my room. They’ve taken the dressers and nightstands.
They took everything out of our rooms that were comfortable, dressers, nightstands. They took the pictures off the walls. You know, they said you could hang yourself at every turn. They’d locked all the doors in the common area. My front door is open, I can walk out the door any day, but I can’t walk into the day room. I can’t walk into the pantry. I can’t walk into the music room and it’s so frustrating. But if somebody’s in the room, a patient, I can bang on the window and they can let me in, which is just mindbogglingly insane, that this administration would be so just so…They say it’s the accreditation process. The Joint Commission, not the hospital. And it’s just really sad.
And the staffing has just gotten sub-par and we just…it’s really gotten miserable and we’re in the middle of a pandemic, right? So all my programming is done on the unit. I can’t leave the floor except to go for runs on the ground, and it’s just really bad, and there’s no work. Our hospital does not allow patients working. At the other sites I always had a job. No internet, no communication. It’s really kinda spartan. And there’s just no end in sight.
My doctor told me a year ago that I’d be out by Christmas, by my next retention, and it never happened. So I don’t even trust the people that are in charge of my life. We’re kinda prisoners in our own home and there’s no end in sight. It’s one day to life, that’s the motto. The 330.20 (the code for New York’s N.G.R.I. law) is one day to life, and I live with some really amazing people that have some serious mental health issues and I care deeply about their experience, and they’re afraid to speak out. ’Cause they’ve been conditioned that the nail that speaks out gets hammered, and you just sit in the chair and shut your mouth and hope it all goes away.
And with COVID we haven’t had a real visit from our families since March. We haven’t had any off grounds outings since March. We don’t have any fitness centers, we don’t have our library, we don’t have anything, ’cause COVID took it all away. And we were lucky. Our hospital didn’t get hit too bad, but down state, hundreds of patients got sick. I lost at least 10 friends that came down with COVID. They passed away, ’cause the hospitals were totally unprepared for what was gonna come.
So that’s been my life, and it’s 22 years. An amazing amount of time for a fire that burned for five minutes, that I don’t know that I set, and nobody was hurt.
So please understand this, that this fire was probably not done by me. I just can’t remember anything ’cause I had a drink in a bar. And, I mean 22 years is just…I watch football games and there’s pictures of young guys that are starting in the league and they weren’t even born when I was arrested. And it’s like, God, these people have had a lifetime, the only life they know, I’ve been locked up. And I’m innocent. Every night my head hits that pillow, I know I’m an innocent man and it may never end.
MS: Could you describe the court hearings a little bit more? The judgement, the decision, why you lost?
BS: Well, this judge, my judge, I had him the last two hearings, he’s a very conservative judge. He pretty much just goes along with whatever the hospital wants, and my doctor, Dr. Ahrens, was very clear that she wanted me to have the U3 privileges, but Albany had declined to grant them, and she would be happy to honor an order that supported U3, but she could not support a discharge order, because I hadn’t displayed the ability to go down the street, deal with a conflict and come back and share it.
Now there’s no indication that I’m gonna go down the street and have a conflict (laughs), but she wants to make sure. And when we said, “Hey, there’s staff at the group home where he’s gonna be living, why don’t we let him deal with these issues at the group home?” She said, “Absolutely not. He has to have the U3. If he doesn’t have the U3 I don’t trust him being in the community.” And, that’s not how the law is written. That’s not how the standards are set.
My independent doctors, I had a multiple of independent doctors over the past six, seven years, that have said I don’t have a serious mental illness as defined in the physician code or whatever that is that they use to define mental illness. That my personality disorder spectrum, I’ve worked hard on the issues, and that it’s actually contra-therapeutic to be in patient settings, because it just exacerbates my symptoms. And nobody really cared, and the judge just signed off on whatever the hospital wanted, but more disturbing, he waited three months to issue the order. Which meant that there’s three months before I can…you know, if I were to have had my U3 three months ago, the clock would be expired on the 90 days the doctor wanted me to exercise my U3 privilege.
He could have ordered a 90-day trial of U3 and come on back to court. He just chose to sign off on the retention and not go outside of the lines. Why have a hearing and why have an independent examiner? I mean the taxpayers paid $10,000 for the independent doctor. She came and saw me three different times and read my entire record of 22 years. There’s not one thing in there about mental illness. You know it’s positive symptoms that are on display. There’s not one iota of psychotic behavior in 22 years of in-patient experience, being observed 24/7. Not one.
No restraints. No seclusions. No fights. And the taxpayers are paying $1,400 a day to keep me here. So, you know, my life was taken. I mean, whoever did this to me, they…it’s so sad.
MS: Is there anything else you want to say?
BS: You know, you just can’t imagine what it’s like living in a place like this. You really can’t. I have some really great people that live here, that didn’t ask for this, and they’re tortured by their experiences, by their symptoms. They’re given medications that take years off their life. I’ve lost a number of peers just due to medicines. It breaks my heart to see first-hand what they do to folks that just are so removed from reality that their world is a terrorist nightmare. I mean, imagine being in the middle of a nightmare and you can’t get out. And here am I, I don’t have a serious mental illness, but I can’t get out, but at least I have my mind, you know?
And I’ve lost everything and I have no future, that’s the saddest part. I’m never gonna have a family. I’m never gonna have a career. These were all dreams that I had that were taken, because I took a plea. If I had gone to prison, I’d have been out in four years. And it’s never gonna end. And, I just wish, I really wish whoever did this to me they would have just put a bullet in my head. I would have been on to my next life by then or whatever happens when you die, ’cause this is a fate worse than death. These are not nice places to live. They’re not places of healing. They’re not places of caring. They’re torture.
I gotta go to a group tomorrow, just one example. I go to a group every morning on substance abuse co-occurring disorder, and I have a history of cocaine abuse and alcohol dependence. And our group leader brings in a little TV screen and we watch TED talks and we watch motivational speeches, and she has let them start these censorship brigades where, if a person talks about addiction that she doesn’t like, she censors the video. Finally, I said something, I said, “Hey, doctor,” you know, I was really polite. I said, “You know, you’re censoring these pieces and I really don’t think it’s helpful. I want to hear.” And Craig Nelson was speaking at an AA meeting and he went into the cocaine part, which was part of my addiction, and she censored it and I said, “Geez, I really wanted to hear that.”
Now, the entire group has to read from a workbook that the New York State Office of Mental Health has provided. So we can’t watch the videos until the very end of the group, and we have to spend 20, 30 minutes of the group reading from this God-awful manual. All because I questioned the fact that she was censoring the TED talk. And it’s my fault. I went to the board of visitors over the locked doors, they reached out to the administration, the administration cracked down. It’s my fault. You know, I try to make life better and everything gets worse and it’s…That’s not treatment, that’s abuse. So it’s just not caring. It’s just, it’s bad.
MS: So where do things stand now?
BS: We have a multitude of legal options. I have a civil rights lawyer that has offered to review my case for $2,500. My family has spent $40,000 or $50,000 over the last six years, and they’re not jumping for joy at the thought of spending $2,500 to have a prominent civil rights lawyer review my case. If he sees what he thinks is there, which would be grounds for a wrongful conviction lawsuit based on misapplication of generally accepted psychiatric diagnostic and treatment methods, he would be willing to take my case on a contingency basis. Unfortunately, he’s not willing to look at my case until he gets the money, and my family is not overjoyed.
And MHLS (Mental Hygiene Legal Services) is considering a couple of options. And I can just wait it out to hope that my doctor honors the 90-day commitment, which still means another six to 12 months, but that the process will go smoothly this time. If I believe it will go smoothly this time, I might be a little disturbed, because it didn’t go smoothly last time. So there’s a lot of moving parts that I don’t have any control over, and the whole thing can fall apart tomorrow if I slip on a banana peel and piss off a staff member and they decide to retaliate. So that’s in the back of my mind, and there’s no guarantees that anything can help.
Bill Sutherland has provided court documents related to his hospitalization:
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