Before he hanged himself at age 19, Brock Tucker had experienced a life marked by instability and tragedy. As a toddler, Tucker was left brain damaged after a near fatal drowning accident. After an adolescence shunted between institutions ill-equipped to deal with his complex needs, he ended up in a federal penitentiary.
According to the civil complaint filed by his grandmother, Janet Crane, Tucker was just five foot six and weighed 140 pounds when he was sent to the Central Utah Correctional Facility for auto theft and related charges at the age of 17. He resembled a child in both outlook and appearance: He had an IQ of only 70 and was highly impressionable, according to his neuropsychologist.
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Despite this, Tucker did have something going for him: A grandma who loved him tenaciously. Entering the Central Utah Correctional Facility (or Gunnison, as it is colloquially known), Tucker intended to use his time productively by studying for his high school diploma.
Crane claims that she was not allowed to see Tucker once in his two years at Gunnison. Denied all visitation privileges, Tucker spent more than 154 days in solitary isolation. Court filings document how he spent his time: He tattooed himself; he converted to Hinduism; he contracted hepatitis. His mental condition deteriorated, and he was diagnosed in prison with unspecified psychosis and major depressive disorder.
The complaint states that sometime in the afternoon of October 2, 2014—two months before he was due for parole—Tucker put a towel over his cell door’s window and hung himself from his top bunk bed. He’d recently received a letter from Central Utah Academy informing him he’d be graduating high school.
“Brock’s siblings and I, we’ll never be the same,” Crane says over Skype. “It’s with us every day. Someone will make a comment or I’ll see a picture, and the memory of his youth will go through my mind.” Her voice cracks. “He never even had a life.”
Now the 69-year-old is filing suit against the individuals and state agencies she believed failed her grandson.
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When Tucker was 12 years old, he began getting into trouble with the law, mostly for stealing cars: He’d recently moved with Crane and his two siblings to a deprived neighborhood. His grandma argues that Tucker was physically coerced into joining a gang, and that—as a result of the impulse control disorder resulting from his brain injury—he was impressionable and easily influenced. According to court filings, Tucker was in and out of juvenile institutions from the age of 13 after Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services was awarded custody over him. Crane alleges that his time in two juvenile facilities in particular was characterized by repeated abuse.
In 2008, he was sent to Futures Through Choice, a nonprofit that incarcerates juveniles on behalf of the state of Utah. Crane alleges that Tucker was physically assaulted by a staff member while in the care of Futures Through Choice. “One of the staff members repeatedly lifted Brock up,” Crane’s complaint reads, “and squeezed him until he could not breathe, then released Brock long enough to catch his breath.” During the assault, the same staff member told Brock he was going to make him “cry like a bitch.” According to Crane’s court filings, the assault was substantiated by Utah’s Child Protection Ombudsman.
Brock with his nephews. Photo courtesy of Janet Crane.
A 14-year-old Tucker later ran away from the facility. “He was on the run for almost a month,” says Crane, bitterly. “This mentally challenged boy, running the streets. He was so hungry, and he slept behind trash bins. It was cold.”
In May 2009, Tucker found himself at Provo Canyon School, a for-profit facility run by Pennsylvanian-based corporation Universal Health Services. For most of the preceding year, Crane alleges that Tucker received no mental health treatment.
Throughout Tucker’s life, doctors and psychologists gave him different, and at times conflicting, diagnoses and treatment. After Tucker began exhibiting behavioral problems in early adolescence, Crane took him to Dr. David Nilsson, a neuropsychologist. “Truth is, I don’t think anyone including Dr. Nilsson could ever give Brock a definitive diagnosis. He didn’t quite fit this; he didn’t quite fit that,” Crane says.
After tests, Dr. Nilsson ascertained that Tucker had an impulse control disorder, low IQ, and brain damage. According to Crane’s civil complaint, Dr. Nilsson advised courts that a traditional reward/punishment system would exacerbate Tucker’s illness, mandating a neurofeedback program instead.
One time we went to see him and he could hardly talk and was shaking.
Ostensibly, Provo Canyon should have been able to deal with Tucker’s health needs—the school offered a neurofeedback program—but Crane alleges that this was not the case.
“It was horrific. They would just randomly put him on different drugs. One time we went to see him and he could hardly talk and was shaking,” Crane says. She also claims that Provo Canyon school staff physically abused Tucker repeatedly. On one occasion, Tucker was allegedly knocked unconscious after having his head repeatedly beaten into concrete by a staff member. The Child Protection Ombudsman again confirmed the assault allegation, but no protective action was taken. After two months at Provo Canyon, Crane alleges that Tucker attempted suicide for the first time.
Between 2009 to 2011, Crane says that Tucker bounced between institutions and became involved in gang activity. In March 2012, Tucker found himself in a familiar place: a courtroom. This time, he was being tried as an adult for auto theft and related charges. Despite Dr. Nilsson’s warning—reported in the civil complaint— to the court that a federal penitentiary would “break him” in August he was sentenced to a two to five year sentence in Utah State Prison.
It’s clear that Crane is haunted by her failure to save her grandson. “They never even gave him a chance,” she says tearfully. Repeatedly, she tells me she “fought” for Tucker: But over time, he lost hope. “We walked outside [from one courtroom appearance] and Brock had tears in his eyes. He rarely cried. And he just said, ‘Grandma, it doesn’t do any good, no matter how hard I try. It doesn’t matter. I give up.’” After serving just over two years in prison, Tucker hanged himself.
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Utah’s suicide rate is consistently higher than the national average. No one is quite sure why, and explanations range from the Midwest’s cultural history of self-reliance, high rates of gun ownership, or even lower oxygen levels on account of the altitude. What’s certain is that Utahns are dying in their thousands, and many of them are young people. In 2014—the year Tucker killed himself—suicide was the leading cause of death for Utahns aged 10 to 17. The number of teenagers killing themselves has tripled in the last ten years.
The World Health Organization identifies the following as indicators that someone might be at risk of committing suicide: A history of suicide attempts, mental illness, being incarcerated, and being a male aged 15-49. Tucker matches all these criteria.
Crane directly blames the authorities at Gunnison for Tucker’s death. “You’re mentally ill, they’ve got you in solitary confinement and they’re prescribing you drugs…” She tails off. “I mean, I have it in writing from Dr. Nilsson to the court, ‘If you put this kid in prison he will wind up getting killed or will commit suicide.’”
Despite this, Crane’s court complaint states that the Utah prison system opted to keep Tucker in isolation for more than 154 days of the last year of his life. Crane alleges that Brock was alone in a cell and allowed out for at most an hour a day. He couldn’t make phone calls, watch TV, receive visitors, exercise, or use the library. He couldn’t even write letters, as his commissary privileges had been revoked—meaning that he was unable to purchase writing materials.
No pens, no TV, no radios or books. How long is it going to take you to go crazy?
“Imagine going into your bathroom,” Crane asks me over Skype. “Maybe your bathroom is even bigger than Brock’s cell. Now lock the door and have no contact with another human being. No pens, no TV, no radios or books. How long is it going to take you to go crazy?”
Having worked variously as a nurse and paralegal throughout her career, Crane has many unanswered questions about Tucker’s death. She recounts being told by medical workers after Tucker’s death that he bled heavily in the emergency room. But if Tucker hung himself, why was there so much blood?
“I went to the hospital where he was taken and they told me they couldn’t resuscitate him because of all the blood. They just kept pumping up blood,” Crane explains tearfully. “I’m like, Where did all the blood come from? You don’t bleed when you hang yourself. No one can answer these questions for me.”
Janet Conway is from the Salt Lake City law firm that’s taken on Crane’s case. It’s a huge case, involving ten separate suits against a mixture of institutions and individuals on the basis of federal and state laws. Crane is suing the Utah Department of Corrections, Futures through Choice, and Universal Health Services (which owns and operates Provo Canyon school). All were contacted by Broadly and declined or ignored requests for comment. She’s also suing individuals who worked at Central Utah Correctional Facility and senior staff at Utah’s child protection agencies, including the Division of Children and Family Services and Juvenile Justice Services.
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Conway tells me that were it not for Crane’s scrupulous note-taking—a product of her career as a nurse and paralegal—the case wouldn’t stand a shot.
“Prisons have become the warehouses for the mentally ill, because we’re not giving them proper support,” Conway tells me over the phone. She says that the authorities repeatedly failed to give Tucker basic medical care, even after he was diagnosed with mental illness.
It is estimated that 80,000 to 100,000 inmates are currently being held in solitary confinement in the USA, many of whom have serious mental illnesses. This form of imprisonment is known to devastate those with mental illness and exacerbate their condition. Given the circumstances of Tucker’s confinement, Dr. Nilsson’s warning that Tucker would attempt suicide didn’t look like medical conjecture—it looks like a prediction.
Crane tells me repeatedly throughout the course of our Skype that she’s not doing this for the money—this is about change. “Children are dying across the USA in these for-profit programs,” Crane argues. “I want all for-profit residential facilities for children abolished. I don’t want any state to put a child in a for-profit program, because there are no safeguards, none.” She stresses the last word. “And I want solitary confinement completely abolished. It’s barbaric.”
I have to believe this is Brock’s purpose in life. To change the world for the better.
Although Conway’s hopes are couched in stoic legalese, her ambitions are equally impassioned. “I’m going to fight the good fight, otherwise things will never change,” she argues. “This is how we treat our mentally ill. It’s got to stop. These entities are big businesses, and the only thing that gets their attention is a public embarrassment or a hit to their pocket book. That’s what this case is about.”
Crane and Conway are taking on organizations with enormous legal resources—Universal Health Services, for example, is a Fortune 500 company. CEO Alan B. Miller is a leading figure in the healthcare industry, and has won prestigious awards. Conway estimates the civil suit will take between three and five years, and it’s possible they won’t win: The deck is stacked against them. “It’s a little like Erin Brockovich,” I comment unthinkingly.
Conway laughs. “Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like. It is like Erin Brockovich.”
