A Promising Youth Succumbs to His Demons, Law’s Failure

Wearing his grandfather’s Lakota headdress, war shirt, buckskin leggings and beaded moccasins, Orlando Roan Eagle stood out from the other costumed National History Day contestants gathered near the nation’s Capitol.

“He was beautiful,” said Linda Fabian, former History Day coordinator for Wyoming. “Everybody wanted to touch him. We couldn’t go anywhere where he didn’t turn heads.”

Three years later, Roan Eagle tied a bedsheet around his neck and hanged himself from a heating duct in a prison cell. He had served four months of a 5- to 15-year sentence for robbing a store at gunpoint.

Although a court psychiatrist said Roan Eagle was not entitled to acquittal for insanity, others say it was clear that Roan Eagle was schizophrenic and deeply disturbed mentally. They question why the system could not have helped him to become well.

“Here you have a bright young man and in a short a period of time you see him go from the heights to the depths,” state Sen. Mark Harris said. “I think it’s a classic example of how the system can fall short of the mark.”

Carol Turner, English teacher and speech coach at Wyoming Indian High School, said Orlando blossomed his junior year when she persuaded him to try out for speech. As a senior, he placed sixth at the state forensics tournament and won the Wyoming History Day contest by reciting an 1866 speech by Suquamish Indian Chief Sealth.

It earned him a trip to the national contest, where he finished in the top 10.

“He had decided he wanted to become a lawyer and go back to D.C. and do something for his people, try to either be in Congress or the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Turner said.

But after high school, problems started to surface.

A fight with another student led to his leaving Dakota Wesleyan College in Mitchell, S.D., where he had earned a scholarship. He had gone to Wesleyan to distance himself from what Turner called a “bad crowd” of friends.

He returned to enroll at Central Wyoming College in Riverton and was named student of the week. But he soon dropped out.

“I did run into him,” Turner said. “I said, ‘Orlando, what’s going on?’ and he said, ‘Well, Carol, it’s that same old problem.’ ”

At 7:47 a.m., on March 26, 1998, a few weeks shy of his 19th birthday, he walked into a convenience store in Lander, brandishing a rifle stolen from an acquaintance’s home. When the female clerk asked if he was joking, Roan Eagle fired a round into a wall behind her and announced, “No, this is for real.”

He ordered her and a customer to lie on the floor, took $115 and went home.

A psychologist on the reservation, Roland Hart, said Roan Eagle’s mental problems began well before the robbery.

“His family wanted me to see him because he had psychotic-type symptoms and they thought it was drug-induced,” he said. “I felt he was coming down with psychotic symptoms, mental illness, separate from any drug problem.”

A consulting psychiatrist agreed and the two concluded that Roan Eagle was schizophrenic.

“I saw him a week before he did the robbery,” Hart said. “I was really worried about him then. I don’t think he was taking his medicine.”

Hart said a professional who talked to Roan Eagle the day of the robbery said the young man was “very delusional, very disoriented.”

“He thought his family had been burned up in a fire and wasn’t alive.”

Schizophrenia is largely an inherited brain dysfunction, Hart says. People break down with it often in their late teens or early 20s, “and they will start hallucinating and hearing things and believing things that aren’t true.”

Hart said he could have committed Roan Eagle to a hospital if he had believed the youth was prone to violence, but “I did not predict that one,” he said. “Most schizophrenic people are not going to act out in a violent way.”

Burton Hutchinson Sr., a member of the Arapaho Business Council who has known the family for years, visited Roan Eagle three times at the Wyoming State Hospital, where he was ordered to undergo mental examinations after his arrest.

The young man was hopeful the system would give him another chance, allow him to seek whatever medical assistance he needed, Hutchinson said.

“I told the chaplain, ‘This boy needs help. He doesn’t need to go to prison,’ ” Hutchinson said. “The law already had other plans for him.”

Doctors at the state hospital determined that Roan Eagle was not insane at the time of the robbery and was competent to stand trial.

“It’s virtually impossible to get a successful insanity plea” in Wyoming, Hart said. “They’re extremely rare anymore. He was at least extremely mentally ill, let’s put it that way.”

With his client facing up to 75 years in prison and no option for an insanity defense, Roan Eagle’s attorney struck an agreement to have him plead guilty to two charges of aggravated robbery in exchange for three other charges being dropped.

Roan Eagle’s father, Reginald, asked state District Judge Terry Rogers for leniency. Hart recommended placing Roan Eagle in a secure nursing home for men. And Harris asked the judge to consider alternatives to prison.

“What I asked for was treatment as a part of the sentence,” Harris said. “Don’t just lock him up and throw away the key.”

Believing Roan Eagle would serve about two years, Rogers handed down a term of five to 15 years, well short of the 25-year maximum.

“I recognize the defendant has a mental illness and he needs treatment for that,” he said at sentencing. “I also recognize the effect on the two victims in this case. It’s difficult to imagine the terror they felt under the circumstances.”

But Roan Eagle became despondent after hearing the sentence, Hutchinson said.

“I knew he was really let down, when all these people were trying to get him back to a treatment center so they could help him,” he said. “He didn’t want to deal with the rest of it. A mind can only take so much, especially when you’re young.”

Roan Eagle was 21 when he died July 3, one day after he was sent to the Wyoming State Penitentiary’s medical unit for closer monitoring. Prison officials said he committed suicide between regular 30-minute checks.

A frequent critic of Wyoming’s penal system, former state Sen. John Vinich, now a tribal prosecutor, said prison officials failed to keep a close eye on Roan Eagle.

“I think if someone’s under suicide watch then they ought to be under suicide watch--continuous monitoring,” he said. “I know the capability is there. It just didn’t happen.”

Rogers had recommended that Roan Eagle be sent to the state hospital if his mental condition deteriorated.

Wyoming Corrections Department spokeswoman Melinda Brazzale said state confidentiality statutes prevent her from commenting on Roan Eagle’s care, but she defended the prison’s health care system.

“The Department of Corrections feels really good about our medical care, and we feel we have a good health provider in place and have professionals working for them who are well qualified,” she said.

Harris, who knew Roan Eagle and is a friend of the family, said more should have been done before he landed in court.

“Our mental health community and the social services community failed Orlando and his family terribly,” he said. “I think there were signs and opportunities that were missed, and I think it happens to a lot of young people.”

Reginald and Vina Roan Eagle buried their son in their home state of South Dakota, where they have since moved.

“Orlando was always so willing to reach out to people,” Turner said. “I feel that somewhere along the line he didn’t get that handout back.”