Keaton Farris's alleged crime was forging a check. He spent 18 days in isolation of a jail with no treatment for severe psychosis (he was diagnosed bipolar). Finally, he was confined to a cell without water for four days. He died of dehydration. He had lost 20 pounds in the 18 days before. His crime was stealing $350 and his punishment was the death penalty.
"Officers offered him some water and he asked for 99 more cups. They told him to drink the water he already had." Said one of the correction's officers.
Keaton was an artist and a writer. This is Keaton's "mania" that he needed to be punished out of. He wrote on Facebook, “Nothing feels better than creating. Anything from a good hearty meal, to a scribble on a yellow notepad, to a fine-knitted tapestry, or even a long epic hymn; we are meant to create.”
“You should never let fear strip you of anything, especially the most liberating feeling you’ll ever know. So, write a better movie! A better song! Paint something absolutely mind bending! Create dammit. Create, for we were created to create.”
The world has been deprived of his work. He will never create again.
His family had the chance to bail him out. The judge had urged them not to. Even though it was the first time he’d had trouble with the law. He had just been released from a mental hospital after his first manic episode. What is clear is that he was psychotic and not responsible for this crime. His family didn't bother to learn about manic episodes, they said so in interviews following the murder. They did not believe in mania. They wanted him punished out of psychosis (which is impossible).
The only difference between Keaton and I was that he died, and I barely survived. Every other part of his story, all the other abuses he experienced in that cell for 18 days, I experienced them too. From starvation, to living in rotting food and excrement for days, to being chained tightly sitting or lying down for several hours or even days. He wasn't just tortured with dehydration and neither was I. Right now, there are 26,000 people in jails and prisons experiencing exactly what he and I did.
You can read the details of his story here: https://www.heraldnet.com/news/what-jail-cant-cure-the-justice-system-fails-keaton-farris/
In my opinion, psychosis and mania are very real states. I don’t believe this makes anyone disordered. Mental disorders do not exist. People in and out of constant episodes do exist, because no one is helping them. Every time someone they don’t know “tries to help” they are really looking to get a payout from their Medicare or health insurance and don’t care if they live or die. They don’t get any support from their family.
That is why people are labeled disordered. Not because they can’t be fixed, not because they were born that way, it’s that they can’t stop jumping from episode to episode without anyone staging a real intervention.
The mantra for psychosis is: “Medication and time,” that’s all they can do to help someone out of psychosis. Medication has never helped a single person recover from a serious episode. The last thing an unstable person needs is another sudden change to their mind and body.
Forcing psychotic people to live with each other is the worst action you could take. The average stay in a mental hospital is 10-14 days. They either bond by deepening each other’s delusions or fight causing trauma and anxiety. The psychotic wards of mental hospitals only teach mentally ill people how to hide their symptoms.
They are such horrible places, they just want out, and they will say anything to be able to leave: 22% of them are re-admitted within 30 days. Which is exactly what the mental hospitals want. They can start over and charge their insurance for the two weeks they are willing to pay. If you don’t have insurance, most states will pay 90% of a 72-hour involuntary hospitalization. Having health insurance actually puts you in a worse situation.
Psychotic mania and depression, there is nothing natural about these extreme states. Medication and mental hospitals compound natural phenomena’s and turn them into “mental illnesses”. Hypomania, that is natural. Managed well, it’s an amazing thing.
My greatest works of art have been created while I was in a hypomanic state, not sleeping for days, playing music repeatedly, and experiencing all the patterns and synchronizes that music contains. Working constantly, pen and paint brush to paper. Only the right side of my brain active. Every 5 hours feels like twenty minutes.
(picture of my owl drawing)
The world fills with color. I see glowing auras around every person, animal, and even objects. It brings me back to my innocent childhood. Every color means something, what emotion someone has, whether they are being honest, and who they really are at their core. I become pure love. All I want to do is create. Everything I experience is in the moment, no care about the future or the past. Of course, managed poorly, as it was during my first episodes, this can slowly become mania.
Mental illness is a taboo label on this website and offensive to most everyone here. However, the fact is that everyone has been “mentally ill” multiple times in their lives. A mental illness is a temporary state, a time when someone’s mental health is poor or even dangerous, but if so, that danger is mostly to the mentally ill person and rarely to the people around them.
When the lines between hypomania and mania start to blur, the person becomes mentally ill. This is only because they will start to do dangerous or illegal things they never would have done not in that state. That is when they are no longer responsible for any wrongdoings.
We must stop being afraid of the label mentally ill. We deserve label, so we can become a protected minority. Educating the public about mania is the most important task that we must undertake. People understand depression, but they have no idea what mania is. For the most part, people who have learned anything about mania believe that it isn’t real, it is simply a person looking for attention or using it as an excuse.
Someone who is or has been manic is treated the worst in society. They are willfully misunderstood. Everyone here must admit that mania does exist, because otherwise we cannot work to protect manic people. Sometimes labels are important. Society needs labels to understand. There is no “mentally ill lives matter” movement, and we can’t start one unless we admit that mental illness is real.
People blame these abuses on racism. That certainly plays a role, but it isn’t the true reason. It’s because people hate the mentally ill. They want them tortured. They want them dead. The portion of society that has experienced severe episodes of mental illness is small, less than 4%.
Of the five guards that abused me, four were black and one was Pilipino, and I was white. I didn’t think it was racism. I knew it was because they thought I was a drug addict, or an attention seeker, or a career criminal. They were sadistic and entertaining themselves. They were inflating their ego and enjoying their position of authority.
One race of people is persecuted the most
What connects us is what we’re diagnosed
Many income levels and colors of skin
I tell our stories and the world plays tiny violins
The only race where prejudice is allowed
We’re a whisper in the world - a world that is loud
You no player characters are so blind
Crying for people who are doing just fine
We’re the ones put to death for petty crimes
While hurting nothing but ourselves most of the time
Our lives are worth pennies on the dollar
Though we could become the greatest of scholars
We’re told gifts from god are a disease
We believe them just to be released
How many great works have been stolen from the world?
Taken by toxic medication just for it to be sold
One race of people is persecuted the most
What connects us is what we’re diagnosed
Many income levels and colors of skin
I tell our story and the world plays tiny violins
The only race where prejudice is allowed
We’re a whisper in the world - a world that is loud
Dairen Rainey was sentenced to two years of prison for drug possession. He was locked inside a shower with scolding hot water. He was cooked alive for hours, while other prisoners listened to him scream for help and apologize endlessly for his behavior. “I promise! I’ll never do it again!” When it was finally over, two inmates opened the shower to retrieve him. His skin had melted off, and he was dead.
Jamycheal Mitchell stole $5.05 worth of snacks. He was left in an isolation cell for four months and the guards regularly refused to give him meals for infractions. He lost 40 pounds and starved to death.
That’s what happens. Officers stop by each cell every 15 minutes to make sure the person inside is alive. Water to my cell was turned off two times. I have never been so thirsty. I would beg for water but each time they passed by my cell they would assume someone else had given me water recently and that I just wanted attention, or someone else would give me water soon. Guards pass by every 15 minutes, someone’s got to do it, right? Only no one did do it. I didn’t get to drink any water for over 48 hours.
People will read these stories and tell themselves these are isolated incidents. Anything else is too horrible to conceive. These people didn't act out more than any other detainees or inmates in the same block. The others we just as abused as them, they just didn't happen to die.
The guards weren't untrained. It doesn't take much training to give a person water, to not chain someone to a chair for days at a time, or as Michael Tyree’s sister said, “I don't know what kind of training they need to not beat somebody [to death], I mean, what kind of training do you need?"
The staff lies everywhere. A guard lies and says they are violent. The rest of staff fears them and treats them like they are violent. They do one annoying thing - but immediately submit to the officers. That’s not enough. They must punish them as much as possible. They write down a bunch of bad behaviors that never happened or are completely over exaggerated to justify their uses of force.
They don’t want them to just submit - which they do immediately. They want them to be absolutely devastated and left with no self-esteem. They want them completely and irrecoverably broken.
Eventually the suffering person, who has been without water for days or covered in their own body waste for days or aching from a beating does one other thing to act out. They destroy a roll of paper towels. They bang at the door for hours. They scream. They attempt suicide. How do the guards react? More punishment.
It just keeps getting worse, with each minor infraction leading to even worse and worse torture. Pushed into further psychosis and worse behavior - but behavior that is only a minor inconvenience and not dangerous at all. It becomes a vicious cycle.
When I messed up my cell, I remember a guard saying, “She made her mess. Let her sit in it.” They did so for two days. I had ripped apart my dinner and it covered my skin and hair, rotting. The smells sealed in my cell. I didn’t even get a shower until the fourth night. I remember watching the water flow off my body and being shocked at how dark brown it was. Then to further the punishment, they chained me to a bench overnight without food and water. However, they didn’t even have to clean the cell! A work group of other detainees did it. So why react so harshly?
Being locked up in a cell alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to: The minutes feeling like an eternity with nothing to occupy your mind. The cell sealed by a solid metal door with only a slot for food that isn't open but for a few minutes every day. The light constantly on 24-7. The pressure of the echoing air a constant strain on your ears and brain. I remember the relief of fresh open air walking out of the cell and the horrifying dread of being returned to it.
Psychotic, delusional, with nothing to distract you from it. No paper or pencils to write with. No books to read. Nothing but your psychotic mind. That alone is more than enough punishment. Yet they feel the need to torture people on top of that.
All of this and worse is standard operating procedure. There is a video of a man who spat on an officer. They tied him down to a table and sprayed his face with pepper spray. He cried out in terrible agony and begged for relief. They let him sit in it for hours.
I experienced it myself. I never would have believed it until it happened to me. A law-abiding 22-year-old girl who had done nothing wrong. I was in my first manic episode and had just been released from a hospital. I was drawing with chalk on Fremont Street, in Las Vegas. I didn’t know why I was being arrested. I was ranting and raving about love.
I was denied my psychiatric medication (which I was dependent on five different medications). I hadn’t taken my dose that morning yet. Which is why medication is so dangerous. Psychotic episodes due to sudden medication withdrawal are more severe than anything that could happen naturally to a person. It can even cause death. I had seizures.
I was never given my phone call because I went straight to an isolation cell. I could see everyone else in a bigger caged room with phones, but I never got access to it. I yelled and hit my door for hours, “I have a right to one phone call!” Everyone assumed I had been given my phone call and moved along.
I didn't know my charges for four days. Again I hit the door and asked, “What are my charges?” I became delusional and thought I had killed my nieces and my sister. I hit the door so hard and so much I almost broke bones.
I didn't see a judge for five days. I wasn't given toilet paper or soap or a shower for four days. I wasn't given medical treatment for severe infections when I saw the nurse on the fifth day, and she did nothing for me at all.
My mania was stolen from me. Now my world is grey.
I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself. If I hadn't seen the tens of other people in isolation with me at the time, experiencing the same. I remember staring down the hallway of isolation cells. It appeared to be infinite.
When I went to virtual court on the fourth day, there was a girl who looked like me. She smelt like me too – like a rotting dead animal. Her hair was in a matte and her skin was ghost white. Her wrists and ankles were bruised. And her eyes! They were so sunken and dead, with dark purple underneath. I hadn’t slept in 72 hours either.
I asked her why she was there.
She whispered that “it was for a spoon.” She too was weak to speak much. She handed me her paperwork. It said she was in for possession of drug paraphernalia, described as a spoon and rubber band.
I saw the tortured soul in front of me and I asked to myself, "This is how they wish to treat drug addiction?" I asked her if anyone could get her out, what about her parents?
She shook her head and said, “My Dad isn’t going to help me anymore. I’m going to die here.”
I found out that I had been there for four days because of an expired car registration ticket. I had paid that ticket four months prior. I was in the mental hospital when the mistaken warrant warning came in the mail.
My public defender had talked to me through the window of my cell for 2 minutes. He said plead guilty and you will be out today. Plead not guilty and you could be in for up to two weeks longer. I pled guilty, but I wasn’t released until the next day.
Since then, I have been in ten mental hospitals. I was in constant psychosis for two years. I have met many victims from all around the country (lots of people not from Vegas have psychotic breaks here). This is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE. When someone dies, nothing changes...
They just get a little better at getting someone as close to death as possible without killing them.
In all these stories of murder, I have only found one case when the perpetrators were charged with murder. They weren't convicted. Most of the time, no disciplinary action is taken. When someone is just tortured to near death, no one believes them. Even if they believe them, they assume they were violent and out of control, meaning deserved it. Otherwise they assume that they are over exaggerating.
In almost all cases this is not true.
The supervisors protect their guards. They want them to continue doing exactly as they have been doing. Their guards are lying, but they don't care enough to investigate and learn the truth. In their mind these innocent victims are all out of control criminals. They deserve it.
The media reads the logs and they report all the notes the guards wrote down as if they were facts. 'Even though he was violent, he still shouldn't have been tortured to death...' Every article, no matter how sympathetic, fills me with rage. Even the media believes their lies with no investigation. All the evidence of the person never having been violent or disruptive before is ignored.
I just read a story about a man who died in a Utah jail in December of hypothermia. They claim he just refused to use his blanket. I suppose if I had died, they would have said the same.
I had just spent 12 hours wet and naked in a flooded concrete room. I was dying of hypothermia. If I lied down, I would have died. So, I walked in a small circle all night. My feet agonizingly frozen to the wet concrete. Each step bruising the muscles. The nerves were beyond raw.
I had to remain completely naked because my suicide smock and sleeping bag were drenched. They would only make me colder. My long shimmering hair I spent the previous 15 years of my life had transformed into a wet matte. Four days of ripping it out of your skull with no hair brush or shower will do that to it. It was stuck to my face and my eyes, driving me insane. I would have done anything for a hair band. When I got out, it all had to be cut off.
At one point I was so cold I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood on the sink of my cell in the diving position. Trying to get up the courage to fall down head first and hopefully die. The guards came and shook their heads at me. They didn’t enter the cell to intervene, but they threatened to. They just watched. I got down.
Later, I hit my head into the wall. I woke up on the ground later freezing cold. My head was throbbing, and I touched my forehead to find a large gash. It had been so long it had stopped bleeding. A guard visited my cell. I was disoriented.
He said, “Do you know what happened?”
I shook my head no.
“You knocked yourself the f*** out!”
I asked him for a blanket. He said later and left. They kept saying “it’s a process” the sleeping bags were washed at a certain time every day and I wouldn’t get one until then. My brain could have been bleeding, but no one took me to the hospital. No doctor checked me, not even a nurse. I begged the correctional officers for the next 8 hours to give me a blanket.
Finally, one acknowledged me.
I said, swallowing my pride, "Please, Sir, give me a blanket." I was too cold and shivering to say anything else.
While looking up and down my naked body he said, "You have to be a good girl."
To this day if someone calls me a “good girl” I have a panic attack. I don’t think I will ever be able to call someone “sir” again.
I started crying and I said, "How can you do this to people?"
He replied, "I've been doing this for 11 years. 11 long, long years. No one is ever going to stop me."
