Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (https://kycir.org/series/adam-horine-banishment-case/)
A Carroll County judge ordered police to send a troubled local man to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. But police had other plans for dealing with their petty crime problem. They sprung him from jail and put him on a bus to Florida.
Carrollton’s police chief has been held in contempt of court for his role in the removal of a mentally ill man from jail and the man’s banishment to Florida in April 2015.
A Carroll County jury late Tuesday found two local police officers not guilty in connection with charges stemming from the removal of a mentally ill man from jail last year and his banishment to Florida.
Though illegal in Kentucky since 1965, the age-old practice of banishment still occurs today. Denver Stewart’s story shows how wrong turns by the legal system can wreak havoc on someone’s life.
Throughout our extensive reporting on jails this year, one group has been relatively quiet: the Kentucky Jailers Association.
A Carrollton man claims police put him a bus without his prescribed medications and banished him to Florida. Adam Horine says he experienced “psychotic episodes” during the trip, urinated on himself and was “forced to catheterize himself.”
Police found “no indication of foul play” in Derrick Rose’s jail death. But our investigation found a bevy of missteps, from the courts system to the corrections system and everything in between. “It’s a cascade of failures, it really is,” one expert said.
Carrollton Mayor Robb Adams issued a show of support for the city’s police chief and a veteran officer who were indicted on kidnapping and misconduct charges. Adams noted that both officers will continue to work as city employees, but in a non-law enforcement capacity. Adams also stressed that the officers are “innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
A grand jury indicted the Carrollton police chief and a veteran officer for allegedly springing a mentally ill man from jail, putting him on a bus and banishing him to Florida earlier this year.
Adam Horine, the mentally ill Kentucky man removed from jail and put on a bus to Florida by Carrollton police earlier this year, faces a new criminal charge. Meanwhile, a police misconduct probe continues.
An estimated 15 to 25 percent of jail and prison inmates nationwide suffer from serious mental illness, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center.