ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Kalief Browder killed himself on Saturday. Browder was the Bronx teenager who was arrested for stealing a backpack - a crime he denied committing. Even so, Browder spent three years in jail on New York City's Rikers Island, much of it in solitary confinement. All that time he was awaiting trial, a trial that never took place. In 2013, the charges against him were dismissed and he returned to life on the outside. Jennifer Gonnerman reported his story for The New Yorker magazine and talked about it here last year. Welcome back to the program, and tell us, how did you learn about Kalief Browder's death?
JENNIFER GONNERMAN: I got a call on Saturday from his lawyer who had just received a phone call from Kalief's mother telling him the news.
SIEGEL: It must have been pretty disturbing news, pretty shocking news, to you to learn this, the death of this young man whom you wrote about, I assume.
GONNERMAN: It was extremely disturbing. He just turned 22 years old 12 days ago.
SIEGEL: Did he have a history of mental illness or attempts at suicide?
GONNERMAN: Kalief attempted suicide several times while he was confined on Rikers Island. He also made a very serious suicide attempt several months after he left jail. He certainly struggled with the psychological damage that he had as a result of his time in jail.
SIEGEL: Was there any indication that he struggled with depression or thought about suicide before his arrest for this alleged backpack theft?
GONNERMAN: He told me that he'd had no mental health problems before his arrest in the spring of 2010.
SIEGEL: In your New Yorker piece you quote him talking to you about the psychological damage of the time that he spent. I wonder if you could read that for us, one of the things that he said.
GONNERMAN: Sure. At one point he told me (reading) I'm not all right. I'm messed up. I know that I might see some money from this case.
He was referring to his civil lawsuit against the city. And he continued (reading) but that's not going to help me mentally. I'm mentally scarred right now. That's how I feel because there are certain things that changed about me and they might not go back.
You know, I do know that he was completely traumatized in ways that are almost unimaginable by the three years he spent in jail, despite not being convicted of a crime, in which he was abused by both correction officers and fellow inmates alike. And a couple of months ago, I was able to obtain some surveillance footage from his time on Rikers Island showing those abuses, which we posted on The New Yorker website. And is - it was disturbing to watch a couple months ago, but to watch those videos in the wake of what just happened is almost unbearable.
SIEGEL: One of those, at the beginning of the video as displayed on the website, shows a corrections officer taking Browder from his cell to escort him, I gather, to the shower. We don't hear what's said on it. There's no sound, but the officer jumps him and starts beating him. And no matter what he said, I can't imagine that that would be justifiable behavior by a corrections officer. Do you know if that officer was disciplined for that?
GONNERMAN: I believe somebody - an ABC reporter called the department of correction after that video came out and they told the reporter that the officer was being, quote, "retrained." You know, one of the most disturbing things about that video, besides what you see on the screen, is the fact that it - that incident occurred on day 862. He had been there for that many days without a conviction. It's almost something you can't even wrap your mind around.
SIEGEL: His life after Rikers was not completely unsuccessful, was it?
GONNERMAN: No, in fact, it was - he was thriving; in recent months, doing better than he ever had. You know, he lost two years of schooling when he was locked up. He lost his junior year of high school and his senior year of high school. And when he got out he was struggling to make up for all that lost time. He took GED prep classes. He passed his GED exam. All he really wanted was to have a normal life, you know, like any 20 or 21-year-old. And in this past semester at Bronx Community College, an official there yesterday told me that he was doing very well and, in fact, had a 3.5 GPA, which is astonishing considering how much sort of formal schooling he had missed.
SIEGEL: Following your reporting, some changes to Rikers Island were promised. As far as you know, have things changed significantly there?
GONNERMAN: The New York Times did a story, I think it was last week, indicating that, despite many people's efforts, not much had changed yet. The culture of Rikers is not something that's going to take a few months. It's going to take much longer, and I can only hope that, you know, Kalief Browder's death is not in vain, that some very serious reforms come out of this unspeakable tragedy.
SIEGEL: We've been talking with Jennifer Gonnerman, who wrote in The New Yorker about the story of Kalief Browder. The news today is that on Sunday Kalief Browder, having spent three years in jail never having come to trial, hanged himself in his home. He was 22 years old. Jennifer Gonnerman, thank you for talking with us once again.
GONNERMAN: Thank you so much for paying attention to Kailef's story. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.