Jailers Cut Off Anti-Anxiety Meds, and a Singer Dies

If Sean Levert had been taking heart medication when he was thrown in jail, his treatment would have continued uninterrupted.

If he had been taking drugs for diabetes, hypertension or asthma, he likely would have stayed on them.

But Levert was taking a prescribed medication for anxiety. So jailers in the largest county in Ohio decided his treatment could wait.

Despite his pleas, Levert was taken off the highly addictive drug cold turkey and was told he would have to wait two weeks to see a doctor.

Jail policy, they said.

"Man, I'm gonna die in here," Levert told his cellmate.

To the increasing outrage of the Cleveland community, Levert was right.

On March 30, six days after he went to jail, Levert died a horrific death, which was documented on video that county officials released to Plain Dealer reporter Donna Miller only last week.

Levert, the son of O'Jays crooner Eddie Levert and an R & B singer in his own right, was in jail after pleading guilty to owing $90,988.96 in child support to three children he fathered before marrying 13 years ago. A cousin told The Plain Dealer that Levert had given generous payments to the mothers, just not through the county's bureau of support. Regardless of whether that's true, Levert was sentenced March 24 to 22 months in prison.

Deputies took him to the Cuyahoga County Jail for booking. Among the possessions Levert surrendered was a prescription bottle of 37 pills of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, which he had been taking three times a day since November 2007.

Police reports show that after Levert was denied the Xanax, he began to hallucinate. On the sixth day of his incarceration, four jailers strapped him into a restraint chair.

In the jarring video of the 39-year-old singer's final moments, he repeatedly screams, "No, no, no!" and calls out for his "mommy."

He is clearly scared and hallucinating. And then, quite suddenly, he is silent, and the video ends.

Emergency workers tried but failed to revive Levert. They rushed him to a hospital emergency room, where he soon was pronounced dead.

Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller ruled that withdrawal from Xanax contributed to Levert's death. Levert also had sarcoidosis, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason issued his own report in September clearing jailers of any wrongdoing. Levert's widow has filed a wrongful death suit.

There are troubling questions yet to be answered, and so far, the people elected to give them aren't returning calls, including Mason and Cuyahoga County Sheriff Gerald McFaul.

For example, why did Warden Kevin McDonough tell The Plain Dealer last April that the video would show only a "calm" Levert who "began to have shallow breathing"?

How is it that Levert told a judge that he had high blood pressure and that he was not taking medication but still was not examined, let alone treated for it?

Why were Levert's diagnosis of anxiety and his alarming symptoms completely disregarded?

Finally, where is the outrage from the county officials responsible for oversight?

This incident raises concerns that go far beyond the tragic and avoidable death of one man. This is an issue of public health, too.

"Prisons have become de facto institutions warehousing the mentally ill," Michael Baskin, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater Cleveland, told me last week.

"Inmates should have a mental health assessment prior to jailing to ensure their continued care and protect cellmates and jail employees," he said. "And there should be follow-up once they are released, to protect the public."

Levert might be alive still if someone, anyone, had cared to protect him.

Instead, he wailed into a video camera, "This is not supposed to happen."

Minutes later, he was dead.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.