‘Fresh-faced’ Ashley Smith choked herself because it ‘felt good,’ inquest told

By Colin Perkel - Monday, April 15, 2013 at 2:22 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – A troubled teenager liked to choke herself because it felt good and alleviated boredom, an inquest into her death heard Monday.

In her testimony, psychologist Cindy Presse told jurors that self-strangulation can be auto-erotic, but Smith didn’t do it for that reason.

“She was quick to say, ‘It’s not sexual, Cindy’,” Presse testified. “She said it just made her feel good.”

Presse, chief psychologist at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, saw Smith, then 18, at the psychiatric prison to which she transferred on Dec. 20, 2006 from another facility in Nova Scotia.

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Textbook case of antisocial personality disorder, but Ashley Smith not unique

By Colin Perkel - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 5:19 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – A teenager who choked herself to death in her prison cell was extraordinarily challenging in light of her severe mental illness but she was not unique, a psychiatrist testified Tuesday.

Unlike many previous witnesses who said they had never encountered anyone so intense and bent on self-harming as Ashley Smith, Dr. Olajide (Jide) Adelugba was more sanguine.

“She was a difficult patient but there was no behaviour that she exhibited that I saw for the first time,” Adelugba told the five-women inquest jury.

“She was different, she was difficult, she was challenging. But she was not alone.”

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Prison psychiatrist testifies Ashley Smith was a ‘large tyrannical child’

By Colin Perkel - Monday, March 25, 2013 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – A psychiatrist is testifying that Ashley Smith was highly unstable and showed some sadistic tendencies.

Dr. Jeffrey Penn tells an inquest into the teen’s prison death that Smith was essentially a “large tyrannical child.”

He said she could not tolerate limits, felt estranged and isolated from peers, unloved, unliked, and often hopeless.

Penn’s assessment followed a 35-minute interview with Smith through her segregation-cell food slot at Nova Institution in Truro, N.S.

Then 18, it was days after Smith’s arrival at an adult prison in the fall of 2006 — a year before she would choke herself to death in a cell.

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Guard allowed to resign after charges dropped in Ashley Smith’s choking death

By Colin Perkel - Monday, January 28, 2013 at 2:43 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – A correctional officer fired after a teenaged inmate choked herself to death was allowed to resign when criminal charges were dropped over the non-disclosure of key documents, an inquest was told Monday.

The Ashley Smith inquest heard prosecutors withdrew charges of criminal negligence causing death against Blaine Phibbs because Correctional Service Canada failed to turn over documents.

Phibbs, who had been fired after Smith died in her cell in Kitchener, Ont., in October 2007, was then allowed to resign.

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Lawyer wonders if sleep deprivation was part of Ashley Smith’s punishment

By The Canadian Press - Monday, January 21, 2013 at 12:04 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – The Ashley Smith inquest resumed today with an assistant warden denying authorities spruced up the cell where the troubled teen died.

Tony Simoes denied the spartan segregation cell Smith lived and died in five years ago had been painted specially for a jury visit last week.

Lawyer Julian Falconer noted there were no differences between the cells that housed mentally-ill inmates and others.

He also pointed out the steel cot in the segregation cell, and asked whether authorities use sleep deprivation as punishment.

Simoes said he couldn’t comment because it wasn’t his area of expertise.

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Ashley Smith jurors to tour Ontario prison where teen died

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 10:12 AM - 0 Comments

KITCHENER, Ont. – Jurors at an inquest probing the death of a troubled teenage prison inmate will spend today taking a tour of the facility where she died.

Ashley Smith was 19 when she choked to death at the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ont.

The five women on the panel are scheduled to visit the facility to observe how segregated prisoners are handled.

Smith had spent years being shuttled back and forth between the country’s prisons and passed much of her time behind bars in isolation.

An inquest probing her death is exploring the circumstances of her death, which was videotaped by guards who were ordered not to intervene.

The presiding coroner has also said the inquest should examine the way the prison system treats the mentally ill.

Ashley Smith jurors to tour Ontario prison where troubled teen died

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 5:00 AM - 0 Comments

KITCHENER, Ont. – Jurors at an inquest probing the death of a troubled teenage prison inmate will spend today taking a tour of the facility where she died.

Ashley Smith was 19 when she choked to death at the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ont.

The five women on the panel are scheduled to visit the facility to observe how segregated prisoners are handled.

Smith had spent years being shuttled back and forth between the country’s prisons and passed much of her time behind bars in isolation.

An inquest probing her death is exploring the circumstances of her death, which was videotaped by guards who were ordered not to intervene.

The presiding coroner has also said the inquest should examine the way the prison system treats the mentally ill.

Warden explains workings of women’s prisons to inquest

By Colin Perkel - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at 4:35 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Jurors at the inquest into the death of a teenaged inmate were given a theoretical tour of Canada’s prison system Tuesday that included why segregation is used and the rules around strip searches.

Andrea Markowski, warden of the Edmonton Institution for Women, provided the inquest with the overview ahead of Thursday’s jury visit to the prison in which Ashley Smith choked to death more than five years ago.

The panel heard that inmates can only be placed in segregation if there is “no reasonable alternative.”

Keeping prisoners isolated is usually done because they pose an “undue risk” to staff or other inmates or to themselves, Markowski testified.

Segregated inmates are allowed out of their cell for at least an hour a day of fresh air, she said, but can be out longer for showers or to use the telephone. Continue…

Long-delayed inquest into prison death of teenager Ashley Smith begins

By The Canadian Press - Monday, January 14, 2013 at 4:13 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – A long-delayed and much-anticipated inquest into the death of a troubled teen in custody begins today in Toronto.

Ashley Smith was 19 when she choked to death in a federal prison in Kitchener, Ont., more than five years ago.

She had spent much of her last year in segregation, shunted across the country from prison to prison.

Her family’s lawyer says her mother feels “utterly betrayed” by the correctional system.

Presiding coroner Dr. John Carlisle has made it clear he wants to explore how people with mental illness are treated in prison.

The inquest is expected to last at least six months.

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Updated: Shocking prison video of Ashley Smith prompted memo to guards

By The Canadian Press - Sunday, January 13, 2013 at 11:07 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – The head of Canada’s federal prisons sought to boost morale among guards in the days after the release of disturbing surveillance videos showing the drugging and duct-taping of a teenaged inmate who died in custody, documents show.

In an internal memo to staff approved by the highest levels of government, Don Head, commissioner of Correctional Service Canada, admitted the treatment of Ashley Smith was substandard, but insisted it did not reflect usual standards.

“I understand that this negative media coverage, especially the videos of Ashley Smith in custody, is upsetting to Canadians, Ashley Smith’s family, and many of you,” Head, who has otherwise not spoke publicly, wrote in the memo Nov. 8.

“These images are not reflective of the kind of correctional system Canadians expect of us, nor are they reflective of the work that goes on every day in our institutions.”

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Coroner will not narrow scope for inquest into Ashley Smith prison death

By Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 11:41 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – The coroner overseeing a probe of the prison death of Ashley Smith has rejected a motion to narrow the scope of the inquest.

Dr. John Carlisle says he will provide reasons for his decision at a later date.

Correctional Services and several doctors had argued the inquest should focus on Smith’s last week before her choking death in 2007 in a cell in Kitchener, Ont.

Her family argued the scope should be much broader, and fought successfully to have disturbing surveillance videos screened.

After that happened last month, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called Corrections treatment of Smith unacceptable.

He also ordered prison authorities to co-operate with the inquest.

As a sign of the new-found co-operation, four out-of-province doctors who had been fighting against summonses to testify agreed to give evidence voluntarily.

The inquest Tuesday also heard demands for Corrections to produce a full list of all relevant videos in its possession and turn over any it hadn’t already done so.

Smith, of Moncton, N.B., died at the age of 19 after wrapping a strip of cloth around her neck and choking herself as guards, who were ordered not to intervene, stood watch outside her cell.

The video screened at the last hearing showed guards duct-taping Smith and drugging her against her will.

Smith was first arrested at age 13 for assault and causing a disturbance. She continued to land in trouble for making harassing phone calls and pulling a fire alarm, and was first thrown in jail at 15 for throwing crab apples at a postal worker.

She wound up in the federal prison system in October 2006, where, during the last year of her life, she was transferred 17 times among nine different prisons in five provinces.

Most of her final year was in segregation due to repeated instances of self-harm and choking herself.

Liberal Leader Bob Rae has called for a federal public inquiry that would go beyond the particulars of Smith’s death to probe the inability of the prison system to deal properly with mentally-ill offenders.

The Commons: Less acrimony from Vic Toews, more questions for him

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 7, 2012 at 5:14 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Rosane Doré Lefebrve wondered if the Public Safety Minister, given yesterday’s tone, might like to apologize to the family of Ashley Smith. The New Democrats present stood to applaud this suggestion.

Vic Toews stood and reported to the House as follows.

“Mr. Speaker, let me be clear on what I said,” he said. “This is a very sad case and our thoughts go out to Ms. Smith’s family. Some of the behaviour seen in these videos is absolutely unacceptable. Our government has directed Correctional Service Canada to fully co-operate with the coroner’s inquest.”

Ms. Doré Lefebrve was not impressed. ”Mr. Speaker, this is not really an apology, but that’s probably all he is capable of doing,” she scolded.

There were groans from the government side.

Hopefully Mr. Toews’ aim yesterday was not to scare opposition MPs away from this subject. It seemed, instead, to have had the opposite effect. Where on Tuesday afternoon, the case of Ashley Smith was not raised until the ninth opportunity, today it was the subject of five of the first eight questions. Continue…

The Commons: Vic Toews again imparts his judgment

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 6, 2012 at 5:14 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. After eight questions about other matters, the House returned to the serious matter of Ashley Smith.

“Mr. Speaker, in her 11 and a half months in federal custody, Ashley Smith was involved in 160 use of force incidents. She was subjected to a barrage of inhumane treatment: pepper spray, tasering, duct tape, and chemical restraints,” the NDP’s Randall Garrison recounted. “We know our correction system failed Ashley Smith, and we know the correctional investigator has put forward basic recommendations to prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again. Once again I ask the minister, will he commit today to fully implementing these recommendations on dealing with mental illness in our correction system so there are no more tragedies like Ashley Smith?”

It was Vic Toews’ responsibility to take this. “Mr. Speaker, this is a very sad case. Our thoughts go out to Ms. Smith’s family,” the Public Safety Minister offered. “This tragedy continues to show that individuals with mental health issues do not belong in prisons but in professional facilities. At the same time, our government continues to take concrete steps on the issue of mental health in prison. Since 2006, we have invested nearly $90 million in mental health for prisoners and we have taken action to improve access to mental health treatment and training for staff.”

The NDP’s Rosane Doré Lefebrve stood and seemed to suggest that a tragedy was not the word to describe Ms. Smith’s fate: that this was not an accident that couldn’t have been predicted. “In the case of Ashley Smith, and too many women with mental illness, you could see it coming,” she said. She then restated the question. “It’s been a week since the NDP has been asking questions about the subject, whether the Conservatives will implement the recommendations of the Correctional Investigator of Canada,” she said. “Will the Conservatives follow the advice of the Correctional Investigator of Canada, yes or no?”

Mr. Toews managed two sentences in response—”Mr. Speaker, we continue to work with the correctional investigator. We review all of his recommendations.”—before turning the matter on the NDP. Nine months removed from explaining that opposition MPs could stand with the Conservatives or stand with child pornographers, Mr. Toews now fretted that the NDP was insufficiently conscious of the victims of crime. Continue…

The Commons: Horrible reality intrudes

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 5, 2012 at 5:28 PM - 0 Comments

Blair Gable/Reuters

The Scene. The House went quiet.

Thomas Mulcair had concluded a sharp exchange with John Baird and Peggy Nash had just needled the government side about the price of shipping armoured limousines and now Bob Rae was on his feet. And suddenly all was very quiet. Not so much because of Mr. Rae—though here he held the House—but of what he had to say.

“Mr. Speaker, in indicating on Friday that the government was doing a complete reversal of its previous position at the Ashley Smith inquest, the government did not tell us what exactly has changed in the government’s position,” the interim Liberal leader posited. “There have now been a number of reports from the correctional investigator, indicating that the Ashley Smith death was not alone, was not a singular act, and in fact there are dozens of people who have died while in custody and who have committed suicide. I would like to ask the government, can it please explain to the House what exactly has changed over the last few days that has caused the government to change its position at the coroner’s inquest?”

Horrible reality has a way of chastening the residents of this place. Suddenly all is solemn. It is as if everyone collectively recognizes that we are no longer joking around here. Indeed, there is no greater demonstration of how far this place can stray from the world beyond these walls than the difference in volume that is heard when something like death—the realest of matters—is invoked. Continue…

‘I’ll duct-tape your face,’ Ashley Smith warned; inquest sees troubling videos

By The Canadian Press - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 8:49 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – The haunting protests of a now dead teenager filled a coroner’s courtroom Wednesday as surveillance videos were screened showing the troubled inmate repeatedly tranquilized against her will or being threatened with having her face duct-taped.

The disturbing images of Ashley Smith — finally released after a two-year fight — showed the 19-year-old at several points in the run-up to her October 2007 choking death in a prison cell in Kitchener, Ont.

“Ow, it hurts,” a hooded Smith yells at one point as prison guards duct-tape her reddened hands to an airplane seat.

“Trust me: I am calm,” she says in a thin voice at another point, as guards threaten her.

The airplane video, from April 2007, shows Smith’s transfer from a Saskatoon prison, where she had an altercation with a guard who was charged, then acquitted, of assaulting her.

Although she doesn’t appear to be putting up much resistance and she’s wearing two “spit hoods” over her face, the guards duct-tape her hands to the arm rests.

The pilot then weighs in.

“Don’t bite me,” he says.

“I’m not,” Smith responds.

“It’ll get worse if you do.”

“How can it get worse?”

‘I’ll duct-tape your face.’

“He’s serious, Ashley,” a female guard interjects.

“Oh.”

Julian Falconer, Smith’s family lawyer, led the hearing through the clips, which Correctional Service Canada had fought unsuccessfully to keep out of public view.

“This is how CSC does business in transferring a victim,” Falconer said grimly.

Smith was first arrested at 13 for assault and causing a disturbance. She continued to find herself in trouble for making harassing phone calls and pulling a fire alarm, then was first thrown in jail at 15 for throwing crab apples at a postal worker.

Her sentence ballooned from days to years as time was added for numerous in-custody incidents.

Despite deteriorating mental health, Smith spent the last year of her life in prolonged segregation, transferred 17 times among nine institutions in five provinces.

Correctional Service Canada is fighting to narrow the scope of the inquest into her death, arguing the coroner has no jurisdiction to delve into the federal prison system.

Falconer called the position absurd.

“Don’t let them get away with it,” he told presiding coroner, Dr. John Carlisle.

“If you mistreat someone often enough, surely that will affect how they behave.”

Falconer noted that Don Head, now the CSC commissioner, said five weeks after Smith’s death in an email that he had serious concerns about the duct-taping.

“If it did occur and no followup occurred, we have a major problem,” Head said.

Yet a board of inquiry essentially found no issues, the lawyer said.

Other clips from the Joliette Institution in Montreal just three months before Smith’s death show half-a-dozen guards in full riot gear surrounding the largely docile teen — who is strapped to a gurney — as a nurse gives her tranquilizing injections.

“Tell her she has no choice,” a nurse identified only as Melanie tells the guards, one of whom presses down on Smith’s body with a riot shield.

“I didn’t even do anything to myself today,” Smith says ruefully.

The injections were prescribed by a psychiatrist over the phone on the basis of what the nurse relayed, Falconer told the hearing.

He pointed out Smith was given “chemical restraints” five times over seven hours.

“There’s nothing else you can do to me,” Smith says at another point.

“If you’re not calm in the next five minutes, I’m going to give you another injection,” the nurse says.

The family wants both the psychiatrist and the nurse to testify “as a matter of fairness,” Falconer said.

A CSC board of inquiry found guards acted to “preserve” her life however, the correctional investigator concluded her treatment had “clinical and ethical shortcomings.”

Another clip, dated July 26, 2007, shows a half-dozen guards in riot gear going into her cell at 5:32 a.m to wake her up.

“Ashley!”

“What?”

“You’re leaving today.”

The video shows some light-hearted banter and even laughs between guards and a completely calm Smith, who is handcuffed.

The nurse says she has two injections to give her. Smith objects mildly. If she stays calm, the nurse says, she’ll get only the two. Otherwise there will be a third.

Surrounded by the guards, Smith presents her arm for the shots, even managing a wan smile.

Although a psychiatrist had only recommended the drugs be given if required, the CSC inquiry board found Smith had accepted the injections of her “own free will and without force being used.”

The correctional investigator decided what was done to Smith had no legal authority and the “abuse” of the rules contributed to her death, Falconer told Carlisle.

Backed by Smith’s family, Carlisle wants a broadly focused inquest that looks, among other things, into how the teenager was treated before she choked herself to death in her cell, after repeated episodes of self-harm.

Lawyers for CSC and three Ontario doctors argued Carlisle’s approach oversteps his legal and constitutional authority.

“This has become an investigation into how CSC treated Ms. Smith, and not an investigation into her death,” Corrections lawyer Nancy Noble said.

Carlisle wants to turn the inquest “into full-blown inquiry into operations and management of CSC,” she said.

In addition, the proposed focus on mental-health treatment would tread on other provinces’ jurisdiction and the scope of the inquest, she said, would go beyond the purpose of Ontario’s Coroner’s Act.

Mark Freiman on behalf of three Ontario doctors who treated Smith raised similar constitutional concerns.

Freiman told Carlisle that provincial inquiries are not allowed to look into federal institutions or services, such as correctional services. The same ban applies to provincial inquiries into another province’s matters, he said.

Freiman leaned heavily on a 1978 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on constitutional jurisdiction known as Keable that set limits on “flexible federalism.”

“Keable has never been questioned, never been overruled, never been circumscribed,” he told Carlisle.

The coroner adjourned the inquest until Nov. 13.

Note to readers: An earlier version of this story referred to a guard assaulting Smith, but this story specifies a guard had been charged with assault but was acquitted.

The wrong fix

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 8:50 AM - 6 Comments

Alan Nicolson hung himself in his prison cell at Manitoba’s Stony Mountain Institution back in 2003. A first-time inmate, Nicolson, 34, was facing four years of incarceration after holding up a convenience store. Suffering from anxiety, depression and drug addiction, he was being held in a special segregated unit called the “mental health range.” But two years later, an inquest into his death found the solitary cell where Nicolson spent his last hours to be a “mental health range” in name only. “There is no programming. There is no treatment,” the report reads. “The mental health staff has no special responsibilities to those housed in this ward.”

The mental health range has since been shut down, but Nicolson’s death still bothers correctional investigator Howard Sapers. It’s a prime example, he says, of how Canada fails inmates—especially the mentally ill. Sapers cites the case of Ashley Smith as well, a New Brunswick teen who killed herself in a prison in Kitchener, Ont., in 2007. Smith, who’d acted out and threatened suicide, was held in isolation up to 23 hours a day before she was found dead in her cell. (An inquiry into her death is planned, although a date hasn’t yet been set.)

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