A contract for release: Why a mentally ill man was strapped to a chair for 46 hours

Jail­ers moved An­drew Hol­land, a schizo­phren­ic in­mate whose con­di­tion had worsened dra­mat­ic­ally, to a re­straint chair. The de­cision on when to re­lease him ap­peared to rest on a men­tal ther­ap­ist’s in­sist­ence that Hol­land agree to not hurt him­self again. Hol­land did not say “yes” for 46 hours. He died with­in an hour of re­lease from a pul­mon­ary em­bol­ism that one doc­tor at­trib­uted to a blood clot, likely caused by long im­mob­il­ity.