‘Tell them I didn’t do it.’ The voices in Devalos Perkins’ head destroy chances for trial.

Dr. Mark Hazelrigg sat in a quiet, private office at Central Regional Hospital.

A click of a button would transport him to the Mecklenburg County Jail.

On the other end of Hazelrigg’s Zoom screen was a mumbling Devalos Perkins. The forensic psychologist had spoken to the 35-year-old man before but his case was still puzzling.

Perkins had gained weight since they last spoke, and Hazelrigg hoped it would be a good sign.

“Nah, nah, nah,” an agitated Perkins said, according to the doctor’s notes.

“I don’t need no evaluation. I was in (Central Prison) safe keeping for nine months, I’m good.”

A few questions later, Hazelrigg learned Perkins was not taking his medication and in fact, was not “good.”

One question from the doctor set Perkins off more than the others: Are you hearing voices?

“You asked me about 10 questions, now this,” Perkins screamed at the camera. “I’m done!”

He stormed out.

Hazelrigg, a doctor at one of North Carolina’s state-run mental health hospitals, heard Perkins arguing with the guards who weren’t able to convince him to stay in the interview.

The doctor’s report for the court was summarized in one sentence: “Mr. Perkins is currently incapable to proceed.”

It wasn’t new for Perkins, and his day in court kept getting pushed further into the future.

Over the past nine years, he had been evaluated at least nine times — only twice, court records show, was he judged at least temporarily lucid enough to stand trial. Both times, he back-tracked and proceedings were paused again.

Perkins is still incarcerated, nearly 20 years after his alleged crime and 11 years after his arrest for murder.

A now-defunct provision in North Carolina law may keep him here, without a guilty verdict, until the day he dies.

Hazelrigg’s August 2021 patient notes describing the conversation and abrupt end would sum up Perkins’ state of mind much like he and others had done before:

“Psychotic symptoms.”

“Disorganized thoughts.”

“Unstable emotional control.”

“Paranoid.”

Probably having auditory hallucinations.

Devalos Perkins' Purgatory

This 4-part news series by The Charlotte Observer examines how a cold case murder devolved into a man’s decade-long purgatory in jail, mental health hospitals and court. This chapter illuminates why Devalos Perkins, now 37, has been perpetually considered legally incapable of being put on trial. In Chapters 1 and 2, we tell the story of how he ended up in jail and show the resulting brokenness across three families after a robbery in a gas station parking lot led to murder.

• Chapter 1: Purgatory behind bars: He’s spent 11 years in jail — and no one knows if he’s guilty

• Chapter 2: ‘Make sure he fries.’ Unsolved for years, a Charlotte murder case turns cold in court.

• Chapter 3 - You are here

• Chapter 4: Imprisoned — with no conviction? How one word in NC law traps mentally-ill defendants.

Hidden struggles

Most of Perkins’ story has received little public attention. Instead, it lives in a thick pile of manila folders in the court clerk’s office, and in short paragraphs entered into a guard incident log.

Some of the unsealed records in his file highlight the grim truth of a psychotic man who is deeply paranoid, delusional, and unable to understand his charges.

Over a dozen other envelopes in his files remain sealed.

As he’s been awaiting trial in Charlotte since his arrest in 2012 on a first-degree murder charge, Perkins has been shuffled between the Mecklenburg County jail, Broughton Hospital, Central Prison, and Central Regional Hospital dozens of times.

Eventually, his behavior was considered so dangerous the court blocked him from returning to Broughton, one of the state’s three mental hospitals for the criminally insane. Instead, he’s now sent to Central Regional Hospital.

The Observer attempted to reach Perkins by sending him letters, and using the jail’s online messaging system but did not receive a response. The Observer also contacted his lawyer who did not respond.

He’s spent a large portion of his time in jail in solitary confinement. His mundane days have been peppered with assaults on guards, being Tased or punched, hunger strikes, and long hours in the jail’s restraint chair, incident reports show.

Just last year, following a detention center disciplinary hearing, he was issued a sanction and told he would spend 150 days in solitary confinement, according to jail incident logs. This punishment, jail records show, came after guards said Perkins assaulted an officer who was trying to clean up a massive pile of trash in his cell.

His list of diagnoses by various doctors over the last 20 years include schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder, social anxiety disorder, and schizoaffective disorder, court records show.

He’s tried several forms of medication over the years, including at least six different antipsychotic drugs. He’s gone through the same cycle for years: Take meds; be considered able to stand trial for a few weeks; relapse to a state of complete delusion behind bars.

That is how Dr. Hazelrigg found Perkins in 2021 during the last significant evaluation on record the Observer was able to obtain in his case.

Officials with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services refused the Observer’s attempt to interview Hazelrigg. A spokesperson said DHHS is seeing an increase in court orders for capacity evaluations and defendants found incapable to proceed. This combined with a staffing shortage leaves fewer hospital beds and increased wait times for mentally-ill defendants.

Jail purgatory 2.0

The nearly 11 years Perkins has spent in jail isn’t the first time he’s been held in legal limbo.

A year after Justin Ervin’s death — but before Perkins was named a murder suspect — he was arrested in Charlotte on drug charges, illegally living in his car and armed robbery, court records show.

Over a two-year period facing charges, he was twice ordered to stay in a mental health hospital; once fired his lawyer; and twice deemed incapable of proceeding to trial due to his mental health.

The case — and that purgatory ended — when Perkins in 2008 took a plea deal that allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

Other times, for other crimes, Perkins has stood trial and been found guilty, public records show. Leading up to his 2012 arrest, Perkins had multiple convictions, including in 2003 for property damage; in 2005 for drug possession; and in 2006 for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

Over a dozen other times he was charged with a crime that was later dismissed without leave, according to public records.

Mental health evaluations in court documents related to the 2006 armed robbery case paint a disturbing portrait of Perkins in his early 20s.

In a forensic evaluation, an expert was brought in to interview Perkins.

Perkins, 22 at the time, shuffled into the room wearing a “malodorous” orange jumpsuit, the report says. He was in tears and shackles.

“Why do I feel like I’m going crazy,” he whimpered.

The evaluator gave Perkins an hour to calm down before the interview. At this time, Perkins had been diagnosed with an unspecified psychotic disorder and was being treated with medication meant for patients with schizophrenia, the evaluation report shows.

He attempted suicide in the past and had difficulty with anger management and anti-social behavior, the doctor wrote.

Perkins remained emotionally distraught and suspicious throughout the evaluation; he had a hard time sitting still, the doctor noted.

“Why we keep on doing this? Why this keep happening to me,” he tearfully asked.

In a later interview with another doctor in 2008, Perkins noted that at one point he had been held in seclusion and solitary confinement — “the hole” — for eight months.

“I hear voices, everyone punking me down.

“I am feeling like I am going crazy and everyone on the inside is trying to erase my memories of my family.”

The voices in Devalos Perkins’ mind

Over the years Perkins kept hearing voices that sounded like his family, according to court records. They promised him money and power, and they warned him about things.

It’s hard to know if he’s had real contact with his loved ones. The Observer spoke briefly to his mother, who lives in Charlotte. She was reluctant to talk and did not agree to be interviewed. She shared only that she had no information about her son’s case and that it had been years since she last spoke to him.

Perkins heard other voices, too.

There was a secret society trying to kill him. He knew it. The voices told him, and they said the government was using members of the court system to do it.

The voices were there to “study” his mind, to tell him how to answer questions, and to control his movements, he said. They warned him about the secret society, the “high secret service” the “aluminati” and about the other threats to his life, he told doctors throughout his hospital stays and evaluations.

Sometimes the voices sent him messages through the television in jail, he explained.

Doctor notes in his court file show he believed a microchip was installed in his brain to control his thoughts.

And while some days he could give detailed explanations of the legal system and his charges, on others he didn’t know what a judge or jury was.

The voices and behavior show up in Perkins’ evaluations by multiple doctors going back to at least 2006.

By the time he was charged with murder in 2012, Perkins believed the government could read his mind — but he could stop them by keeping his mouth open, he told one doctor. On that day, he opened his mouth, kept it open, and refused to answer any more questions.

Perkins’ delusions deeply concerned his attorney at the time, Grady Jessup, who requested an evaluation of Perkins in 2013.

“He feels the masons and/or the Illuminati are controlling his life,” Jessup wrote in court documents. “He stated he is an alien and not from this world, he is not human.”

For three weeks he had refused attorney visits. He had also stopped taking his medication. In the Mecklenburg County jail, he was accused of assaulting guards, breaking sprinklers, and smearing feces on his cell walls.

Months later, Perkins wrote to a judge — one of a series of letters, some more coherent than others — a short rambling single paragraph:

“This is inmate Devalos Perkins #323484, I want a new attorney I fill the one I got ain’t wit me he’s wit aluminati and want me sent away in prison.”

Almost ‘capable’

Dr. Hazelrigg has pages of notes from his years of evaluating Perkins.

Once, he’d thought, Perkins was doing better. And Hazelrigg noted his symptoms were under control because of his medication.

That finding would finally allow Perkins to return to court in 2015.

After more than three years in jail doctors determined he might be mentally stable.

But when called to evaluate Perkins just before his hearing, Hazelrigg found him delusional again — and markedly more paranoid.

Perkins still wanted to have a trial.

Hazelrigg noted that Perkins “concretely maintained he will just, ‘Tell them I didn’t do it,’” referring to the judge.

Hazelrigg testified Perkins could not stand trial. Instead, he was sent to a state mental health hospital.

While it’s unclear how long he stayed in the hospital, court records show he was soon after removed from the facility for assaulting staff and patients.

He’d repeatedly attacked multiple fellow patients; tackled a staff member so hard, the person’s head was injured; hit a nursing assistant four times in their face; directed sexually-inappropriate behavior toward a female worker; and attempted to break into the nurse’s station, a description in court documents shows.

The hospital staff called police after doctors reported they’d “lost clinical control of the unit” with Perkins there.

When police arrived they cuffed Perkins, pepper sprayed him, and left. The next day Perkins punched another staff member and was placed in restraints for hours due to “continued threats.” Two days later, he was back on his Mecklenburg jail bunk.

Records show this instance in 2016 of violence in the mental health hospital was at least the third time staff there reported abuse at the hands of Perkins.

During his previous admissions to Broughton in 2014 and 2013, Perkins’ records tell the same story. He repeatedly attacked nurses and patients until finally, the care staff said he was too dangerous to treat and sent him back to Central Prison, or the Mecklenburg County Jail.

For most mentally-ill suspects behind bars, these hospital stays are the best option for treating and stabilizing defendants so that they are considered legally-capable of standing trial, experts and officials have told the Observer. But in Perkins’ case, any progress in the hospital has eroded each time he’s returned to jail, records indicate.

His case file shows the seemingly-hopeless cycle whenever Perkins has grown closer to a potential end to his purgatory.

He once told his lawyer he wanted to accept a plea offer to reduce his murder charge — but he refused to answer the questions legally required on the paperwork in court.

When told he might be eligible for a more generous plea, Perkins changed his mind and told Jessup he didn’t want one.

Instead, he asked for the death penalty, which had already been taken off the table.

Jessup explained to the judge: “He wanted the death penalty, because the world is going to end in 2020 and he doesn’t want to be alive when the world ends.”

Five years later, in 2018, another plea deal was being discussed, according to his court records.

Perkins wrote to the district attorney’s office: “I been in jail over five years on a cold case murder & robbery charge that happen 2005 and I didn’t commit.

“Most of the time I’ve been incarcerated for this charge, I have been back and forth from the mental hospital for evaluations. Now I am compitint to go to trial.”

Two months later, he sent another letter asking to go to trial and for a third time, asking for a new attorney who he believed could better represent him.

“I don’t feel comfortable with this lawyer, he is working with (the) state DA. Can you please have these charges dismissed or give me a new attorney? Thank you.”

Soon after Jessup withdrew from the case. In court, Perkins said he wanted to fire him.

Norman Butler took over the case as his public defender and said while Perkins was initially able to assist in his defense and discuss the plea, he quickly deteriorated and refused to come to court. Butler requested another capacity evaluation, according to court records.

That was 2018 and it was the last time, based on court records, the case was potentially close to a plea deal or advancing to trial.

Devalos Perkins’ mental health

Incapable to proceed cases

Perkins insists he didn’t commit the murder. But his behavior in jail and mental hospitals shows he isn’t safe for society either.

When he’s deemed too dangerous for mental health institutions and too sick for jail, Perkins is sent to a ultra-high security “safekeeping” prison facility located in Central Prison in Raleigh.

Legal and mental health experts say there are no easy answers about where someone in Perkins’ condition should be detained or supervised. North Carolina’s mental health system for criminal defendants generally seeks to treat the most severe of cases outside of jail but in practice, that’s nearly impossible.

Across the state, hundreds of people were found incapable of proceeding over a recent four-year period, state data show.

Even with the most difficult cases, the law forbids indefinite pre-trial detention.

But Perkins is an exception.

Our investigation shows he’s caught in legal ambiguity — sentenced to purgatory due to a single word in state law that was amended a year after his arrest.

The law may have the power to imprison Perkins for the rest of his life.

Sources

Scenes not witnessed by the reporter in this series were compiled from research, interviews and public records including documents from the Mecklenburg County Detention Center and Clerk of Superior Court.

Credits

Kallie Cox | Reporter

Anna Douglas | Editor

Rachel Handley | Illustrations & Design

Gabby McCall | Page Design

David Newcomb | Development & Design