An eyewitness to the suicide of Ryan Rideout, a 25-year-old, severely mentally ill Augusta man who hanged himself with his bedding in his Maine State Prison Supermax cell on October 5, calls into question the official version of events. He described the response of guards as sluggish and cruel.
Joseph Bradley, 26, who was recently released from the Warren prison, told the Phoenix in an interview that it took a long time for a guard to respond to the alarm Bradley had sounded when he saw Rideout prepare to hang himself. Bradley said his cell in the solitary-confinement facility was opposite Rideout’s.
“I watched him tie the noose,” he said.
When Rideout started fixing it to a sprinkler head, Bradley said, he pressed an alarm buzzer, but, “No one came down for half an hour.”
Then the guard who came taunted the “already hanging” Rideout for a couple of minutes as he sipped his coffee, Bradley said. He quoted the guard: “Come on, Rideout, you can do better than that.”
Bradley said the guard then went to the cellblock gate and called “Code Blue,” an emergency signal, into his radio.
But then, Bradley said, the team that responded first put handcuffs and feet shackles on Rideout before he was cut down — “before medical could do anything.” This took several minutes, he said. Rideout “was gray,” he added. Then he said the medical team tried to resuscitate him.
Warden Jeffrey Merrill’s account is considerably different. He “praised the efforts of the staff to save the man,” according to an October 9 article on the Rockland Courier-Gazette’s Web site.
The warden also told the newspaper that Rideout’s suicide was discovered on a guard’s normal rounds. He said Rideout, who was serving a sentence for burglary, was in the Supermax because he had been verbally abusive to prison staff. (See “Death in the Supermax,” by Lance Tapley, October 13, 2006.)
Since then, Department of Corrections officials have refused comment on the suicide, citing a state police investigation that in October they said they expected would be wrapped up quickly. The state police automatically investigate prison deaths.
Bradley said he told his story several days after the suicide to corrections investigator John Scheid and another man he thought was from the state police. He said he has received threats from guards “to keep my mouth shut.”
Now living in Augusta with friends, Bradley is bright and articulate but appeared dazed at being let out of solitary confinement directly to the streets — and without, he said, proper equipment to deal with his diabetes or any money. The last four months of his 27-month sentence for burglary and theft were spent in the Supermax because, he said, of his “mouthing off” to guards.
In December, Ryan Rideout’s mother and brother filed a legal notice that they will pursue a wrongful-death suit seeking monetary damages against the state, warden Merrill, and unnamed guards at the Supermax.
The Rideout family’s attorney, Andrews Campbell, of Waldoboro, said he interviewed a Supermax prisoner, Jesus Rodriguez, who repeated what the Phoenix had earlier reported — that he had heard a guard taunt Rideout, saying he “didn't have the balls” to go through with his threats to commit suicide.
Rodriguez identified the guard as the same man who Bradley said mocked the dying or dead man as he hung from the sprinkler.
Campbell said he was prevented in December from interviewing three other Supermax prisoners because of the state police investigation. The corrections department also has prevented the Phoenix from interviewing Supermax prisoners. (See “Lockdown,” by Lance Tapley, December 15, 2006.)
In the fall, both Maine State Police lieutenant Gary Wright, head of criminal investigations for central Maine, and midcoast district attorney Geoffrey Rushlau told the Phoenix they knew nothing about an investigation of a Supermax guard in the Rideout death, though they both suggested state prison officials might be investigating the matter. The Phoenix is withholding the name of the guard, who reportedly has been forced to go on paid leave, pending more efforts to reach him.
Bradley, the former inmate, said Rideout had just been taken off suicide watch before he killed himself. Rideout had been put on watch, he said, because he had cut himself. Bradley and other prisoners said Rideout had complained that needed psychotropic medications had been taken away from him.
The Courier-Gazette article about the suicide quoted Merrill as saying the inmate was not considered a suicide risk. But Rideout had a history of headline-making suicide attempts.
In e-mails among state officials responding to word of Rideout’s suicide — obtained by the Phoenix after a Freedom of Access (freedom of information) request — concern was expressed that there might be negative publicity over the question of how his mental illness was treated.
“Debate between psychiatrists regarding mental health recommendations re this prisoner will become an issue,” Alan Stearns, Governor John Baldacci’s aide on corrections matters, warned top state officials the day after the suicide, using e-mail shorthand. “Written versus unwritten psychiatric conclusions may cloud.”
Stearns expressed concern that this incident might spur the Maine Civil Liberties Union to sue the state over Supermax conditions. The MCLU has been pressing corrections officials to improve prison conditions, but it has not filed a suit.
As for the Rideout family’s intended lawsuit, assistant attorney general Diane Sleek, who defends the Department of Corrections, said she does not comment on pending litigation.
