Just how cheap is life? How cheap is an incarcerated black man’s life?

Darren Rainey was mentally ill and he was serving a two-year sentence on cocaine charges. For a start, he suffered from schizophrenia, he should have been in a mental health facility, not jail. And he should absolutely not be dead!

But he was left in an extremely hot shower for over two hours, leading to him dying, apparently from an undiagnosed heart condition. They concluded that he did not die from burns despite a nurse inspecting the body after death saying that the 180F shower had left his skin peeling off and burns over 90% of his body.

Image credit: Florida Dept. of Corrections

Florida prosecutors have decided not to charge any correctional officers.

The Grio reported (Source):

Assistant State Attorneys Kathleen Hoague and Johnette Hardiman stated in their 72-page memo that one inmate’s claims that Rainey was calling for help and had been scalded to death were unfounded.

According to them, “the evidence fails to show that any correctional officer acted in a reckless disregard of Rainey’s life.”

It was on June 23, 2012, that Rainey was taken to the shower after he smeared feces all over himself and his cell.

The shower is operated from outside the room as was in the control of the guards. They say that Rainey was not cooperative and refused to wash off so they left him there, though they checked on him regularly.

By the time they decided to take him out of the shower he was laying face up in three inches of water with no pulse.

According to the medical examiner, Emma Lew, his death was attributed to a combination of schizophrenia, heart disease and confinement in a small space.

Schizophrenic people can have nervous system reaction that can sometimes trigger a heart attack if there is an underlying condition.

“It is not substantiated that the temperatures inside the shower room were excessively high,” said Lew.

The prosecutors wrote, “Placing an inmate who has defecated upon himself in a shower to decontaminate himself is not conduct that is criminally reckless,’ they wrote. ‘There was no evidence of any intent to harm Rainey.”

I can’t get my head round why no one is being charged! This is absolute abuse….. Your thoughts?