The story is a sad one.  A story of the life of a schizophrenic that ended in tragedy through the act of suicide.  Andrew Martinez suffered from schizophrenia and ended up in Santa Clara County Jail’s acute psychiatric ward where he took his own life at age 33 by suffocating himself with a plastic bag.

His mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit claiming the county staff was deliberately indifferent to Martinez’s safety and thusly contributed to his wrongful death.

It is not my intention to argue the merits of the wrongful death suit as there are too few facts reported to make a reasonable judgment or form a reasonable opinion.  What I have an extreme problem with is the idea that an adult life is only of value when there is earning potential attached to that life.

Debra Saunders who penned the following commentary is evidently of the opinion that Mr. Martinez’s life held little value….he was after all nothing but  a loser who couldn’t even make it in a half-way house and certainly had no ability to do what our society places the highest of values on – earn a living.

Ms. Saunders questions the value of the one million dollar award to other mentally ill inmates not seeing any value in punitive means to assure more diligent attention to inmates safety in the future.   She tosses off the severity of the problem by stating “Granted, the system fails whenever a mentally ill person kills himself in jail.”  I’ve heard more outrage at the death of a dog than Ms. Saunders demonstrates toward Mr. Martinez in her opinion piece.

I think often the people who defend the system against law suits of this nature are the first to complain when a criminal gets a slap on the wrist, yet when the system itself fails in the most egregious of ways a slap on the wrist is just fine with them.

If most of our society shares Ms. Saunders opinion that earning a living validates and bestows worth on a life, is it any wonder many adults fall into depression when they find themselves out of work?  I have to wonder if Ms. Saunders would feel the same way if this were one of her loved ones?  She states that this was a jackpot for mom, evidently not grasping that this woman’s child is DEAD.  Is our society so callous, so materialistic that a wrongful death suit’s merits must be boiled down to earning ability?    I fear it probably is and that fact is as sad as Mr. Martinez’s death.

A Naked Million
A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders
Sunday, May 24, 2009

In 1992, after he stopped wearing clothes to his UC Berkeley classes, Andrew Martinez was something of a walking only-in-Bezerkeley joke as the campus’ own Naked Guy. But his life was no laughing matter.

Around 1997, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 2003, he was arrested for assaulting a staff member at a halfway house where he was a resident. He spent the next two-and-a-half years in Santa Clara County jail, its acute psychiatric unit, Napa State Hospital, and Atascadero State Hospital — until at age 33, he killed himself by suffocating himself with a plastic bag in a jail cell on May 18, 2006.

Last week, Santa Clara County announced that it settled a wrongful death lawsuit and would pay $1 million to his mother, Esther Krenn.

The county also agreed to notify families when inmates try to kill themselves or have a breakdown, which the county’s lead Deputy County Counsel John Winchester told The Chronicle’s Henry K. Lee it already had been doing informally.

[snip]

To start, $1 million seemed an awfully large sum to award a mother for a son with little to no earning power. Granted, the system fails whenever a mentally ill person kills himself in jail. But if you agree with Krenn’s complaint that county staff “were deliberately indifferent” to Martinez’s safety, violated his civil rights and wrongfully caused his death, it’s still hard to understand what value there is for mentally-ill inmates in seeing $1 million go to Krenn’s and attorney Geri Lynn Green’s bank accounts.

[snip]

A mentally ill person can use the system to fight needed treatment — and if he harms himself in the process, it’s a jackpot for mom.

SOURCE