RERUN: Jesus Rincon Murietta: Wherein, the central character/victim subjected to one of The Arizona State Hospitals' most egregious scandals in recent history goes to prison, while the one's directly responsible for the cycle of violence underlying his conviction continue to draw their pay from Arizona's collective citizenry. 

As per the factual details of the following debacle, I attest to the following impacts as they applied to me as an ASH patient, 2011-12, as per my precise thoughts and associated emotions, verbatim from my personal journal notes documented at that time in my life:

"If these people are willing to put the interests and safety of the greater public behind their own selfish objectives, how am I to believe that my own care needs and safety are of concern to them? (April 13, 2011)"
(originally published in October, 2013) 

RECAP: Beginning in late May, 2011, following the failure and refusal of ASH staff to report or divulge information specific to the escape of a violent patient, and concluding most dramatically in late August, 2011, with the brutal murder of an innocent young woman, Arizona citizens as a whole were subject to the same forms of potentially lethal ineptitude that the patients at ASH are subjected on a daily, around the clock basis.
     Meanwhile, each and every high ranking state employees centrally involved in this matter are still benefitting from the trust afforded them through their positions as state employees, and at least two of them -Dr. Steven Dingle and Cory Nelson- have since been promoted within the greater ADHS/BHS public behavioral health care construct. Business as per the usual, in other words.  

     I was just apprised by one of Jesus Rincon Murietta's legal representatives that yesterday (Oct. 4), he pleaded guilty to second degree murder in relation to his role in the death of April Mott in late August, 2011. He will be sentenced on November 2, 2012, and faces the possibility of twenty two (22) years in prison and lifetime probation. 

     Herein, the near end of a saga that began in late May, 2011, when Murietta successfully took advantage of lax security conditions in order to violently escape the confines at The Arizona State Hospital, after which the senior clinicians most responsible over the ASH operation in general, including ASH's then Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steven Dingle, and Murietta's primary attending physician, Dr. Steven Morris, unlawfully altered the facts about the event, and in complicity with ASH's executive level staff (including ASH's acting CEO at the time, Ann Froio, as well the hospitals' in-house legal counsel, assistant attorney general Joel Rudd), willfully engaged in a blatant cover up of the escape itself, which I contend was designed to avoid accountability, and possible oversight and backlash from state and/or federal regulatory bodies. Approximately 90 days later (late August 2011), after running amok in the greater Phoenix metro area for the entire summer, Murietta viciously beat and then stabbed a young Phoenix woman named April Mott to death. Murietta was almost immediately arrested, but it wasn't until after an investigative story written by a reporter named JJ Hensley (of the Arizona Republic newspaper) was published on September 29, 2011, that Murietta's own appointed attorney even became aware of the fact that Murietta suffers from serious mental illness, much less so that he had violently escaped Arizona's sole long term mental health care facility in the previous month of May. Likewise, April Mott's family, and other persons directly affected by this sordid series of events, were not made aware of the underlying story relating to April Mott's murder until they, too, had heard these details through news reports aired or published 30-45 days after she died. (see: "Victims Family Questions Why Man Was Free", by JJ Hensley, September 29, 2011; AZ Central.com).

     As I have described in several previous articles, including one of my first, "A Modern Day Horror Story" (April 05, 2012), I was the sole primary source of information supplied to JJ Hensley in relation to his final report about this affair.

     I am not stating this claim in order to receive any commendations or other like praise. My only aim is to clarify one critical reality: 

Despite the fact most of the staff at ASH knew about this escape  (this certainly applies to any/all staff assigned to the CIVIL SIDE of the ASH facility in summer 2012), not a single one of them alerted anybody- in any fashion or context- about the reality that a very unstable and known to be highly dangerous person had violently escaped from ASH and was (then) at large in the greater Phoenix community. The one's running ASH maintained this blatant concealment of the fact for the following 4 months, including after local news reports loudly published Murietta's role in April Mott's death almost 90 days after he escaped (as per Hensley's article).

   And the simple fact stands that if I- while hospitalized at ASH- had not taken the initiative to concern myself with fairly obvious administrative misconduct in relation to ASH's senior clinical and executive staff specific to the escape, there is every possibility that no aspect of the underlying history of this affair would have ever surfaced.

ASH's administrative staff, as well as executive officials in the Arizona Department of Health Services, including Director Will Humble,would have kept a tight wrap on the fact that an escaped ASH patient brutally murdered an innocent young woman, and Jesus Murietta would have never been identified as such. Likewise, if ASH staff had merely done the right thing and issued a formal report specific to Murietta's escape at the time it occurred, April Mott would still be alive today. This is the state of affairs as it stands today. ASH is still being run under the authority of the same goddamn people who directly caused this series of events to occur, including the same goddamn doctors, who are still granted the privileges associated with the responsibility of caring for and handling the treatment needs of ASH seriously mentally ill and highly vulnerable patients. The vulnerability of ASH patients extends to their voicelessness, and as this matter proves, even when someone such as I did everything I could at the time to draw critically due attention to the escape when it occurred, ASH administrators went around the mountain and back in squashing the merits of my initial reports to JJ Hensley, and my credibility as such, was temporarily put into question as a consequence of these administrators' lies. Thus, the cycle of violence that ultimately led to April Mott's death and Jesus Murietta's pending sentence in Maricopa County's criminal court was initiated by nobody other than the high ranking state employees that I have identified above (and countless times in the past); and just as they bent over backwards to refute my original reports about the escape itself, ASH's administrative staff are still engaged today in precisely these same sorts of tactics, willfully and knowingly preventing the truthful flow of information underlying these matters as a whole.

      I first contacted JJ Hensley of The Arizona Republic newspaper in order to report Jesus Murietta's escape within a week of that specific event, for it was apparent by then that the administrators of ASH had not reported the escape. The subject itself was being discussed by patients as well as staff, centered around the question "Why didn't the newspaper report this?" In my own right at the time, I had three very specific concerns, as follows:


1) I was worried about Jesus Murietta. I consider Jesus to be a friend,
this because we had met and grown fairly close in a Tucson area 
mental health facility, and I was sincerely worried about his welfare; I 
knew, for example, that he had made at least one very serious (lethal)  
attempt to kill himself, which was one reason for his hospitalization. 

2) I was worried about the safety of the public. Jesus has a propensity 
for violent outbursts associated with his mental illness and related  
hallucinations; in the Tucson facility, for example (St. Mary's Hospital
extended care unit [now closed]), I had witnessed Murietta very    
aggressively  attack male staff on at least 3 occasions, and at ASH, it was 
known that  he had attacked both staff as well as patients on numerous 
occasions, too (including within a week or two of his escape).

3) I was deeply disturbed by the fact that the administrators of 
The Arizona  State Hospital were engaging in what to me was an
unmistakably covert cover-up of Murietta's escape, which I knew 
was posing a direct and imminent threat to the public, as well 
as to the well being of Jesus Murietta, a seriously mentally ill 
and at-risk young man who had escaped the Hospital grounds in 
south central Phoenix at about 9 p.m. with nothing but the clothes 
on his back. By the time that this event occurred, I had become 
well aware that various senior ASH staff members are willing to 
engage in graphic dishonesty and unlawful patterns of misconduct 
clearly designed to condone and preserve ongoing patient abuse 
at ASH, so I was immediately suspicious about the underlying 
motivations relating to why they did not dutifully report Murietta's escape. 

Let me clarify here, that it doesn't take rocket  scientist to recognize and see through the nature of criminal misbehavior that I witnessed and was subjected to at ASH, but given the danger that these issues pose(d) to myself and every other ASH patient, I can attest to very real trepidation and outright fear for my safety that did arise as an undeniable consequence of the fact that administrators who have near utter control of each and every ASH patients' lives. I have- simply put- never felt so vulnerable and at risk of grave harm than at that time when I was a patient at The Arizona State Hospital, fear and deep seated anxiety that I still feel/effectively experience today, which has only arisen due to the grossly dangerous misconduct of those  ASH staff willing to flaunt a brazen disregard for the well being of their clientele as a matter of standard practice, in clear and irrefutable violation of the public trust.

     As stated above, I consider Jesus Murietta a friend. But more importantly, I recognize and value him as a human being. This is not to say that I in any way feel that he deserves anything less than full accountability, in his own right, for his actions specific to April Mott's horrific death. Jesus is not the first or only person I have considered to be a friend at some point in time, only to learn later that they are (were) capable of outright homicidal behavior. In such cases, I remember these individuals for their positive characteristics and never forget that they are human beings; I also attest that in my own right, I rarely if ever make friends with people who have absolutely no positive characteristics. Fortunately, there simply are not that many people like that in my world- particularly now that I am no longer around or under the care of such people at The Arizona State Hospital, including Dr. Perviaz Akhter, Donna "You are soooo busted!" Noriega, Joel "the mortician" Rudd, and so on. 

     Specific to the decisions and motivations underlying ASH's willingness to obscure the facts about the escape when good faith inquiries about the event were submitted by JJ Hensley, the individuals centrally involved at that time failed to exhibit the primary concerns that I- a lay person with no experience in administrative heath care- had after Jesus Murietta escaped from ASH in late May, 2011 (with respect for Murietta's safety, and that of the public), and instead put their own selfish interests first.   

     In Jesus' specific case, the bare bone fact(s) is that April Mott would not have died in late August, 2011, if not for the criminal misconduct of both ASH's senior clinical staff (e.g., Dr. Steven Dingle, who was actually promoted not long after this and still works for ADHS today!) and executive staff (Noriega, Rudd, Froio).

    Another bare bone fact is that Jesus Murietta would not have killed this young woman and be on his way to prison today if not for the criminal misconduct of these people. One citizen dead, another one headed to prison, because of these entrusted, high ranking, high paid, state employed individuals. All of whom are still employed in ADHS/BHS, at the expense of Arizona's taxpayers, and to the direct detriment of ASH's seriously mentally ill and disabled patient community. There is no happy ending to this tale, and these people are still sitting comfortably in the employ of the state, receiving pay that comes straight out of the pockets of Arizona's collective citizens. Getting away with it, lock-stock-and barrel.

   BUSINESS AS PER THE USUAL IN ARIZONA

     I am happy, in context, that this aspect of the tale is nearing its conclusion. Happy, as such, for April Mott's family and any other like individuals closely affected by the situation; and also for Jesus, at least to the extent that he now knows what the future looks like. He is a man, and I know that he is very strong. Perhaps Jesus will somehow survive this aspect of his personal life, and emerge a better, healthier man than he was when he escaped from ASH. Not likely, given the limitations of the prison experience, but possible, and if there is any one thing that I feel Jesus Murietta deserves today, it is the simple presence of possibilities. 

IN CLOSING: I have, in recent weeks, became acquainted with a very outstanding and deeply dedicated advocate for the rights of incarcerated persons in the state of Arizona. Her name is Peggy Plews, and she is doing a great job maintaining her own blog, which is entitled Arizona Prison Watch and can be found on blogspot.com. I will turn to her with specific respect for Jesus Murietta's case once I know more about his sentencing, including where he is to be incarcerated, because Peggy is very committed to doing all that she can in relation to numerous concerns relating to the rights of prisoners, including inmates affected by mental illness and other medical disabilities. As such, she is a good person to to have on our side, and I really appreciate her support of my work. We have discussed possible collaboration, and I anticipate knowing more about how that will shape up in the near future. 

Please keep up your dedication to helping me defend the rights, dignity, and general well being of Arizona's most seriously ill citizens. The patient abuse at The Arizona State Hospital is ongoing, of this I am rock solid certain, and it needs to stop. The abuse of hospitalized vulnerable adults

is sickeningly inhumane, highly illegal, and downright unacceptable. 

paoloreed@gmail.com 

ll