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<h1><small>Suicide in Solitary: The Death of Alex Machado</small></h1>
<div id="single-date" class="date">July 24, 2012</div>
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<div class="tags"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://solitarywatch.com/2012/07/24/suicide-in-solitary-the-death-of-alex-machado/">http://solitarywatch.com/2012/07/24/suicide-in-solitary-the-death-of-alex-machado/</a><a
href="http://solitarywatch.com/tag/suicide/" rel="tag"></a></div>
<div class="author"> <span class="by-author"><span class="sep">by</span>
<span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n"
href="http://solitarywatch.com/author/sal2329/"
title="View all posts by Sal Rodriguez" rel="author">Sal Rodriguez</a></span>
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<p>Alexis “Alex” Machado was a prisoner at Pelican Bay State Prison’s
isolation units for nearly two years when he took his own life on
October 24, 2011.</p>
<p>According to the autopsy report, Machado was last seen alive at
approximately 12:15 AM “as he was examined and then cleared by medical
staff for a complaint of heart palpitations.” Thirty minutes later, at
12:45 AM, an officer found Machado and reported that “….Machado [was]
hanging inside his cell…” He was seen “sitting on the floor with a
sheet tied to his neck and the sheet tied to the top bunk.”</p>
<p>Concluded the autopsy: “The decedent died as a result of
asphyxiation due to strangulation by hanging.” Toxicology reports were
negative.</p>
<p>As institutional records and letters from Machado in the year
leading up to his death show, he had been suffering severe
psychological problems in response to his prolonged isolation. Once a
jailhouse lawyer whose writings were both clearly and intelligently
composed, his mental state would decline at Pelican Bay.</p>
<p>Machado had been incarcerated since 1999 on a robbery charge and a
related shooting. He was sentenced to an 80-to-life prison
term. Described as an intelligent and thoughtful man with a warm smile
by his sister, Cynthia, he generally experienced no problems in his
initial 11 years of incarceration. For most of his time, he was held at
Kern Valley State Prison.</p>
<p>Things began to change in late 2007, when a race riot took place.
“The prison said he was the one who started the riot,” according to
Cynthia, “when he really had nothing to do with it.”</p>
<p>His involvement in the riot would result in his being placed in
Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) in December 2007. Though he was
never officially found guilty for the riot, prison gang investigators
would begin to build a case for his validation as a gang member. In
December 2008, he was placed in the ASU again for “manufacturing a
weapon”; in January 2009, a confidential informant was officially cited
by prison officials as evidence of his gang activity.</p>
<p>He was finally validated as a gang associate, in large part due to
the confidential informant, on February 4th, 2010. In his appeal of
the validation, he argued that the source items used in his validation
were insufficient, saying that “these allegations are not true and I
initiated nothing.”</p>
<p>He further charged in his appeal that his validation as a gang
member was in retaliation of his acquittal in the racial riot case.</p>
<p>He was sent to Pelican Bay to serve an indeterminate SHU sentence on
February 17th, 2010 from the Kern Valley ASU.</p>
<p>Being screened into Pelican Bay, he reported no psychological
problems.</p>
<p>Soon after arriving, however, he reported in letters that he was
consistently harassed by the guards. In a letter dated March 10th,
2010, he wrote that “when I first got here an officer told me that he
was being pressured to make a bogus psychologist referral on me…I guess
they want to make it look like I am going crazy.” He reported that
guards took him to debrief in an attempt to make him look like an
informant. Further, he was told that a green light (hit order) had been
placed on him; a claim that he didn’t believe.</p>
<p>An ASU classification document indicates that he received some
mental health services in May 2010, and previously in October 2009.</p>
<p>A mental health chronos indicates his first significant problem at
Pelican Bay surfaced on January 24, 2011 with a mental health referral
from a correctional officer for paranoia.” Also beginning in January,
he was noted to have decreased the number of showers he took, from a
regular of three a week to only once or twice a week.</p>
<p>He received a 115 (rules violation report) on March 1, 2011 for
”willfully resisting” officers after “fishing line” for communication
with other inmates was found and he refused to “cuff up.” He told the
health care worker who saw him after his extraction with pepper spray
that “I want you to put down that they are denying my legal mail.”</p>
<p>On May 31st, a mental health referral reported that he “stated he is
being watched, listened to, cell has bugs and cameras. He also stated
he hears knocking on all his cell walls.”</p>
<p>Things would decline significantly in June. On June 5th, a mental
health record reports that he was depressed, anxious, poor
hygiene/grooming, hallucinations, paranoia and delusion. He reported
that is presenting complaints were listed as “hearing voices, can’t
sleep anxiety a ttacks, someone/something controlling thoughts, hasn’t
cleaned cell in three days.”</p>
<p>Days later he would receive another referral for anxiety and
reporting increased heart rate and breathing. On June 12th, he was
placed in a crisis room for threatening to kill himself.</p>
<p>The following is from a Counseling Chrono dated June 21, 2011:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 1440 hours I was summoned to the
cell of Inmate Machado…by Registered Nurse…Upon looking in the cell
window, I observed a noose hanging from the air duct. I observed the
No-Tear Mattress lying on the cell floor torn apart. I ordered Machado
to submit to handcuffs, to which he complied. After handcuffing Machado
I placed him in holding cell #136 so Dr. N could speak with him. I
returned to cell 188 and observed feces smeared on the right wall. It
appears Machado had torn off the outer layer of the mattress, fashioned
a noose from it, and tied the noose to the vent…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Just days after the incident, he was issued a notice that he would
be placed in Pelican Bay’s Administrative Segregation Unit:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You were endorsed by the CSR on 02/04/10 to serve an indeterminate
SHU term, due to your validation as an Associate of the …prison gang…On
06/22/11, your Mental Health Level of Care (LOC) was elevated to
Correctional Clinical Case Management (CCCMS), PBSP-SHU Exclusionary;
therefore, your placement in PBSP-SHU is no longer appropriate. Due to
the above, on 06/22/11, a decision was made to place you in the PBSP
Administrative Segregation Unit. Single celled due to prison gang
validation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By June 30th, he was deemed to have “active psychotic symptoms” but
had a low risk of suicide.</p>
<p>On July 6th, he threw his breakfast through his food port and
refused breakfast the next day. On the date of the incident a referral
indicated ”inappropriate behaviors”, “hallucinating” and “poor impulse
control.” The referral notes that he believed “electromagnetic pulses
are interfering with his thoughts.”</p>
<p>A mental health document says later that “[he] is believed to be in
a desperate situation with an equal amount of anxiety. During ICC in Ad
Seg, he refused the debriefing process; hence his situation appears to
be deteriorating possibly leading to [his] current state of mind.”</p>
<p>In June and July, he was variously diagnosed with Antisocial
Personality Disorder and Brief Psychotic Disorder. According to his
sister, though he was officially granted a vegetarian diet for
religious reasons, he would primarily subsist on an unhealthy
cheese-only diet due to his being allergic to peanuts, the other
primary component of a prison vegetarian food tray. This is believed by
his sister to have been one of the factors that contributed to the
already physically and mentally stressful environment.</p>
<p>Machado’s sister noticed her once coherent and seemingly adjusted
brother decline in his time at Pelican Bay. “I noticed he started
writing strange things, about seeing things,” she says. Around this
time, she and her mother called Pelican Bay after receiving a
despondent letter from Alex. “I’m afraid for my sons life,” Machado’s
mother told one of his mental health counselors.</p>
<p>Though CDCR has previously gone on the <a
href="http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/11/advocates_link_inmate_suicides.php">record</a>
to say that he was not a participant in the hunger strikes, the Machado
family believes that he in fact did participate in the strikes. He
reportedly mentioned the strike many times in letters sent to his
family.</p>
<p>In late July or early August, he sent a letter to his sister
claiming that he saw “someone I know and I saw another in pieces and
demons…I don’t know the significance of it…I hope it was a
hallucination.” He wrote that was taken to the infirmary for leg pains,
where he further wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was handcuffed in a cell and was being watched by two officers I
never seen before…I was handcuffed for what seemed like an eternity. I
felt like I was in that room handcuffed for days but it was only an
hour…the shooting in my case flashed in my mind and they suggested I
died that day in the shooting and that I was now in ‘purgatory’ or in
‘Dantes Inferno.’ I felt trapped. I thought I was condemned to be
handcuffed in that cell forever. They made me believe I was killed in
real life. I thought I was caught in another realm. I saw insects in
the cell and demons. It was way out I don’t know what happened…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Also written while at Pelican Bay, Machado reflected on his decade
long incarceration, writing ”I wish my life was different and that we
could all be out there together…I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck and
I have been away from home for a long time now.”</p>
<p>In the final months of his life, he would continue to spend over 22
hours a day in a small cell. His letters came less and less frequently.
During his time at Pelican Bay, he told his family not to make the over
700-mile trip to visit him. He didn’t want them to see him in chains.</p>
<p>Though his letters in the two months leading to his death were
increasingly distorted, he did have some glimmer of hope. He had
secured a lawyer who was in the process of challenging his original
criminal conviction.</p>
<p>His sister describes his plight this way,</p>
<p>“It takes one inmate informant to report you falsely. Then you are
in solitary confinement. When you want to fight to get out it is
impossible because of all the torture that goes on in there physically
and mentally.”</p>
<p>After years of isolation, paranoia, and gradual deterioration, he
took his life.</p>
<p>“He was a loving brother, son, and uncle…raised by a single mother
and got lost in the system,” says Cynthia. “He wanted to be treated
fair.”</p>
<p><em>The Machado family welcomes any assistance in getting Alex
Machado’s story out. If you’d like to contact the Machado family email
the author of this article at: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Sal_SolitaryW@yahoo.com">Sal_SolitaryW@yahoo.com</a>.</em></p>
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