Adam Bulger

Joel Kelly: Calm and lucid-seeming in Hartford

Joel Kelly says it only took one bad day to ruin his life. Appearing calm and seeming lucid while walking his dog outside his Hartford home, he recounted his version of the events of June 7, 2003, a day that began with him waking up under the porch of an abandoned Hartford apartment building and ended with him getting charged with kidnapping.

As a result of what Kelly, 28, calls "a misunderstanding," he has spent the last five years in jail and psychiatric hospitals. He's now under the supervision of the state's Psychiatric Security Review Board, living with significant restrictions. "I'm under the PSR board for a period not to exceed eight years," Kelly said. "But after eight years, they can recommit you. So, potentially, it could be for a lifetime. I can't go out of the state. I have a curfew. I have to call in [from home] twice a day."

He adds, "I guess you'd have to go to jail for five years to know what it feels like."

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Kelly, a talented artist with computer skills, says he has been painfully shy all his life. After seeing a television commercial for Paxil, he decided the prescription drug could help his social anxieties. Although he worked for the insurance company, Aetna, he was a temp worker and did not have health insurance. In May 2003, he visited a Middletown walk-in clinic where he received six months' worth of free Paxil samples and a month's prescription for the drug. Unfortunately, Kelly said, the Paxil unearthed his latent manic tendencies.

"Three and a half weeks after I started on the Paxil, I quit my job for no reason," Kelly said. "I just went in and felt like quitting and quit. When you're in a manic episode, you're in the moment. There's no past and no future, and you're really, really happy for no reason at all."

Kelly's mother and sister convinced him to check into a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Once they arrived at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Kelly bolted from the car, and ran running halfway across town, from Hartford's West End to its Frog Hollow neighborhood.

That night, he fell asleep on the porch of a boarded-up house. When he awoke early the next morning, he was again in the grips of a manic episode. In interviews available in court records, Kelly described himself as feeling like Superman or Jesus. He knocked on doors requesting water and food and striking up conversations.

He saw a 2-year-old girl standing unattended near the street. Two women asked Kelly if he knew where the girl lived. Kelly lifted the girl by her armpits, and carried her a short distance. The girl's step-grandfather drove up in his car to get the girl. The man spoke little English, and Kelly spoke little Spanish. Believing the step-grandfather was kidnapping the girl, Kelly shouted, "You don't have to go with him if you don't want to." The girl's mother reportedly yelled at Kelly to stop. (The mother later contended she witnessed a physical struggle over the girl, which Kelly denies.)

Police officers stopped Kelly. Finding he had no criminal record, they let him go. The step-grandfather flagged down another officer and recounted the episode. Police again stopped Kelly, and this time found him to be in a questionable mental state and detained him.

As a result, he finally made it to St. Francis. Doctors deemed him psychotic, and held him for 10 days. After he was released, Kelly surrendered to police, who charged him with kidnapping, threatening, assault and risk of injury to a child.

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Until June 6, 2003, Kelly had neither run afoul of the law nor displayed any dangerous signs of mental illness. Still, his bond was initially set at $1 million. His family couldn't pay the bond, and Kelly was locked in Hartford County Jail for eight months.

According to Kelly, Reese Norris, the attorney hired by his family, only visited him once during that time, and failed to independently research the case. (Norris declined to comment for this story.) The judge found Kelly not guilty for reasons of insanity, placing him under the jurisdiction of the Psychiatric Security Review Board.

In Connecticut, a person who pleads NGRI is sent to a psychiatric facility for the amount of time they would have served in prison. Unlike prison sentences, NGRI commitments can be lessened if the person shows improvement in therapy. Conversely, a person can also be re-committed if they don't respond to treatment.

Currently, there are about 150 people under jurisdiction of the PSRB, a six-member governor-appointed board. Because their chief mandate is public safety (their Web site touts their zero percent recidivism rate), the board is cautious about discharges and conditional releases.

At first, Kelly was placed in Whiting, the maximum-security division of Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown, home to patients deemed dangerous to the population at large. "I don't believe that as a matter of common sense or a matter of law that Kelly should have ever been in maximum security," said Connecticut Legal Rights Project Staff Attorney Susan Aranoff.

In Whiting, personal possessions, including things like pens, are strictly regulated, and there are few private rooms. "You're sharing space with people who are floridly psychotic, people who have been found not guilty for reason of insanity for charges including murder," said Aranoff.

Later, Kelly was moved to Dutcher, a medium-security facility within CVH. But even in that facility, Kelly was denied access to his bicycle and books, and he gained over 100 pounds from his medication.

"People under the PSRB system are under tremendous pressure to follow all treatment recommendations," Aranoff said. "If they don't follow their treatment recommendations, it basically gets looked at as if they are treatment resistant or they don't have insight into their illness. That gives the treater so much power. You or I can say no to medical treatment or drugs. But once you're under the board it's like any opposition is suspect." The system, Aranoff said, makes patients vulnerable to coercion and prolonged misdiagnosis.

Many of these criticisms are consistent with a 58-page Department of Justice report, released in 2007 on CVH, which upbraids the facility for creating an atmosphere where patient needs were chronically unheeded and their conditions were regularly misdiagnosed. The hospital replaced several high-level staff members after the report, though it "categorically rejected" some of it.

Kelly partially attributes the length of his stay to a cookie-cutter approach to treatment. To demonstrate rehabilitation, Kelly said he had to show remorse. "I didn't have remorse," he said. It was a misunderstanding."

With the assistance of Yale Law School's Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, Kelly has filed a petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, essentially a request for an overturning of the original ruling or for a new trial.

"A best-case scenario is that once the state and the court have a chance to review our petition, they would agree to release Joel unconditionally from the custody of the PSRB," Mendlow said. "Failing that, we would like Joel to have a second chance at a trial where he could have competent representation and a chance to prove his innocence."