Schizophrenic Man Finds Freedom From His Delusions--In a Coma

For eight months, Michael Frlekin lived in tiny cells, tormented by imaginary voices that told him all the jail’s guards, inmates and doctors were conspiring to hurt him.

His paranoid delusions soon became real sufferings. Other inmates, perhaps provoked by his strange behavior, bloodied him in fistfights. Doctors ordered him strapped to a bed with leather restraints.

He was drugged to control the symptoms of an illness diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. Then a group of guards nearly beat him to death with their batons and flashlights, after he allegedly attacked one of them. He lapsed into a coma for a month. Finally, he was taken to a hospital--freed at last from his jail nightmare.

“My son was frightened half to death in (jail),” said Grace Frlekin, his mother. “His eyes were so big with fear. He was floating in and out of reality.”

Before his run-ins with the law, Grace Frlekin said she had sought medical attention for her son several times, but he was not sick enough to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals without his consent.

Frlekin, now 28, had been arrested in March, 1990, for assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly struck a customer on the head with an ashtray at a San Pedro gift shop.

During her regular jail visits, Grace Frlekin said she watched as her son’s condition gradually deteriorated. Even before Frlekin’s encounter with the deputies, he was injured in fights and complained about Adolf Hitler sending men after him.

According to jail medical records obtained by The Times, jail doctors also had taken note of the severity of Frlekin’s illness. He was admitted at least four times to the jail’s mental observation units.

On Sept. 4, a jail physician noted that Frlekin had a history of altercations with other inmates and that he was unsafe outside the mental observation units.

Despite the doctor’s recommendation, Frlekin was back in the general population a month later at the Hall of Justice Jail. On Oct. 15, while waiting in line for dinner, he began to act in a bizarre manner, according to a sheriff’s spokesman. Frlekin allegedly attacked a deputy who tried to pull him out of line. Four other deputies rushed to the scene.

“I could hear him hollering for mercy,” said an inmate who witnessed the incident. “I knew he was in pain.”

Hospitalized for severe head injuries, Frlekin lapsed into a coma for a month.

Two sheriff’s deputies have been relieved of duty pending an investigation of the incident.

Grace Frlekin filed a federal lawsuit in April, charging that jail officials maintain a policy of housing in the general population “inmates who were known . . . to be in need of psychiatric hospitalization.”

Although jail officials would not comment on the Frlekin case, county officials said it is common practice for psychotic inmates to be shuffled between the relative safety of the mental health modules and the dangers of other jail units.

The perpetual shortage of beds leaves the officials with few other options. Jail officials say they medicate the inmates to stabilize the symptoms so they can be transferred out of the mental units. Frlekin received such medications as Cogentin and Mellaril as he was shifted between jail units, according to medical records.

“It’s like a game of musical beds, constantly,” Dieter Poiser, a jail psychologist, said as he inspected a mental health module. “We need to get them stabilized and moved out, because there are three to five people (in the general jail population) waiting for this bed.”