Florida inmate’s shocking chainsaw suicide is a wake-up call about mental illness | Opinion
The story of a mentally ill man jailed on littering charges who killed himself by taking a chainsaw to his neck while on work duty at a state prison near Miami provokes a visceral reaction. We want to turn away, to shield ourselves from something so horrible.
But the life and tragic death of Tristin Murphy, at the heart of a documentary film by WFOR-TV CBS Miami journalist Jim DeFede, needs to do more than shock us. It should make us mad. It should be a warning. Our criminal justice system, in Florida and other places, has become a warehouse for the mentally ill.
That has to stop, and Miami-Dade County is leading the way. Thanks in large part to the decades-long and sustained efforts of County Judge Steven Leifman, there are programs making a difference. There’s hope that Miami-Dade can serve as a model for the rest of the country in breaking the terrible cycle that has become routine in so many jails: mental illness followed by arrest and incarceration and then a return to the streets, where it starts all over again.
In and out of jail
Murphy was 37 when he died in 2021. He’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia, been in and out of jail for three years and made suicide attempts in the past. He was being held at the South Florida Reception Center, had been off his medication for a week and had not been receiving psychiatric treatment.
He clearly needed help. The crime that landed him behind bars should have been a major clue: He drove his truck to a pond near a jail where he’d been held in the past, got out and rolled the vehicle into the water. The charge? Littering over 500 pounds, a felony. Fellow inmates said they’d heard him ranting about a man with no skin, and they gave him a wide berth. Still, he was assigned to work duty where he picked up a chainsaw, fired it up after several tries and put it to his neck.
Horrified guards and inmates witnessed the death. A Miami-Dade homicide detective is heard in the documentary saying on a radio call: “So, wait a minute, this guy’s an inmate and he has a chainsaw?”
“WAREHOUSED: The Life and Death of Tristin Murphy” details Murphy’s path through the courts and jails and the pain of his parents, who are now raising his two sons. After watching it, one thing is clear: The criminal justice system shouldn’t be society’s answer to the mental health crisis.
Miami-Dade’s example is one that others should emulate. It has taken decades, with Leifman and others hammering on the issue, but we have built something of a system here: a mental health diversion program in the courts, a mental health court to handle the cases that need to be adjudicated, Crisis Intervention Team training for police to help them identify cases with a mental health component and, in about six months, a new Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery.
The center, a first-of-its-kind facility, will extend our ability to help mentally ill people in this county enormously. It will include housing and long-term assistance to help them integrate into society. It will offer, under one roof, dental care, job training, counseling and even a courtroom. It will help mentally ill people get treatment and stay on it.
‘Not rocket science’
There are many reasons why we need this approach, which would be available to all but those accused of the most serious crimes. Treatment, rather than jail, would be better for the person and cheaper for taxpayers. It’s also more humane and more appropriate. Anyone who has suffered from mental illness or had a family member or friend with mental illness knows that this kind of help could be a lifesaver.
Leifman, associate administrative judge for county courts in Miami-Dade, has made the intersection of mental illness and the courts the mission of a lifetime. “It’s not rocket science,” he is prone to saying. “We know what works.” But not enough places are doing it.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently said, in the wake of the mass shooting in Maine where 18 people were killed, that “an involuntary commitment” of the shooter might have helped. Maybe. But perhaps the governor should look closer to home and see how the mentally ill are handled in Florida’s jails and prisons first.
Leifman travels the country to talk about what Miami-Dade is doing, but statewide progress is slow. Broward County, Jacksonville and Sarasota are working on programs, he said, “But it’s not systematic.” The most logical approach, he said, is for the chief justice of the state Supreme Court to call a summit, with all three branches of government represented, to formalize a statewide approach to a more enlightened, humane and cheaper way to handle mentally ill offenders.
Other states have done that very thing. Florida, where Miami-Dade is demonstrating a better path forward, should certainly do the same.
The criminal justice system was never meant to become the option of last resort for the mentally ill. It’s time for Florida to confront that, before there’s another terrible story like Tristin Murphy’s to shock us to the core.
