A mentally ill inmate in Oregon lost nearly 100 pounds before his sudden death, records suggest

On April 18, Douglas County deputies used a wheelchair to load a 27-year-old Black man named Skye Baskin into a transport van.

He’d grown up in the South, in the foster system, and had come to Oregon to stay with friends. He’d been arrested for disorderly conduct, but his case hadn’t gone to trial.

After 49 days in the Roseburg jail, Baskin was being transferred to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem for court-ordered psychiatric treatment.

What happened next was captured by surveillance cameras at the hospital: The van arrived in Salem, two hours to the north, just before 11 a.m. When two Douglas County officers opened the door, Baskin was sprawled on the floor of the van, unresponsive.

The deputies lifted Baskin’s limp body off the floor and put him in a wheelchair. Baskin’s head slumped forward onto his chest. His feet dragged on the ground.

A deputy removed the restraints from Baskin’s wrists. Baskin didn’t move. He was wheeled through the admissions area to his room. When a nurse finally checked Baskin’s pulse, about 15 minutes after he arrived, he didn’t have one.

It’s unclear whether Baskin drew his last breath in the transport van, or in the hospital’s arrival area.

But new details from his autopsy and interviews indicate that Baskin’s medical emergency had started long before he arrived that day.

Baskin’s autopsy suggests he lost nearly 40% of his body weight in the seven weeks he spent in jail. Baskin was refusing most of his meals in custody, according to an attorney representing his family

Many questions about the circumstances of Baskin’s death are still unanswered. What we do know about his death is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a person is arrested for, in essence, being too mentally ill to care for themselves.

Now, with a law recriminalizing drug possession in Oregon in effect as of Sept. 1, and a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows counties to penalize people sleeping outside, it’s more likely than ever that people like Baskin could end up in jail.

His death and others call into question whether the people held in the Douglas County Jail have meaningful access to medical care. The private contractor the county uses, Wellpath, has been accused in wrongful death lawsuits of delaying and denying care to inmates and pretrial detainees, to keep costs low and increase its profits — allegations the company denies.

Related: Oregon jail health care provider destroyed evidence and tried to cover it up, judge finds

The week Baskin died during his transfer to the Oregon State Hospital, another inmate died after he suffered a medical emergency in the Douglas County jail. In all, there have been at least six deaths of Douglas County inmates and pretrial detainees since 2023, including one two weeks ago.

OPB shared findings from this story and written questions with Douglas County officials. Citing an open investigation, they declined to provide answers.

96 pounds lost in 7 weeks

After Baskin’s death, state licensing inspectors faulted the Oregon State Hospital’s admissions staff for failing to realize right away that an unresponsive patient required an assessment, a doctor and an emergency response.

In danger of losing federal funding, OSH agreed to take vital signs for all incoming patients and provided two full days of new training for the nurses who work in the admissions department.

By contrast, Douglas County officials have not taken any public responsibility for Baskin’s death, or shared any policies they’ve changed to avoid a repeat tragedy.

It’s not clear if the Douglas County deputies transporting Baskin on April 18 knew he hadn’t been eating and was near death.

In incident reports written by staff at the state hospital the day Baskin died, two security guards and a nurse reported speaking with the deputies when Baskin couldn’t get out of the van on his own. The deputies told them Baskin was refusing to respond. That he was choosing not to walk, was catatonic, and that was normal for him. Afterward, the nurse called for more security.

Related: A man spent his final days in isolation in an Oregon jail. Why did he die?

Citing an open Oregon State Police investigation, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin has declined to answer questions about the actions of his staff that day, or the 49 days Baskin spent in custody before he died.

He’s also refused to say if any jail staff are on leave during the investigation.

“The health and safety of every person in custody is a priority and taken very seriously,” Hanlin said in an emailed statement.

The Douglas County jail is run by the sheriff’s office, with funding allocated by the Douglas County Board of Commissioners.

County Chair Chris Boice has also refused to answer questions about what happened to Baskin.

In May, under Oregon’s open records law, OPB sought Baskin’s autopsy to try to clarify what caused Baskin’s death, whether the deputies who dropped him off knew he was having a medical emergency and who had custody of Baskin when he died.

The Oregon State Medical Examiner’s office declined to release the autopsy and claimed it had no records at all related to Baskin’s weight or dehydration. The medical examiner prevailed when OPB petitioned the state’s attorney general to challenge the denial.

But the Medical Examiner’s spokesperson, Kelsey Evans, did share two of the autopsy’s findings in a letter to OPB.

One was that the forensic pathologist who performed Baskin’s autopsy concluded that he was dehydrated at the time of his death.

The second was Baskin’s weight. When Baskin was taken into custody March 1, he weighed 235 pounds, according to two separate Douglas County Jail booking records accessible online. He was 5 feet 8 inches tall.

At the time of his death, Baskin weighed approximately 139 pounds, Evans told OPB.

If the public records of Baskin’s weight are accurate, he lost roughly 96 pounds in seven weeks, nearly two pounds a day for each of the 49 days he spent in jail.

OPB requested the autopsy again on Sept. 20 after learning it had been completed.

The state medical examiner once again declined to release the report, saying it could interfere with a criminal investigation into Baskin’s death in Marion County.

OPB has spoken with multiple sources who have read Baskin’s full autopsy report, and described the findings, on condition of anonymity.

The autopsy, they say, classifies Baskin’s death as natural. The cause: a psychiatric disorder with psychotic features. The autopsy found Baskin had lost almost 100 pounds before his death, and he most likely died after he had an arrhythmia, meaning his heart was no longer able to beat properly, due to “metabolic derangement.”

Arrhythmias are a common cause of sudden death for people suffering from malnutrition and eating disorders. They can be a survivable complication, according to Julie Walsh-Messinger, a psychiatrist based in Ohio who has studied the relationship between schizophrenia and eating disorders.

“Many times they don’t lead to death, particularly if someone gets treated,” Walsh-Messinger said.

Difficulty eating is a symptom for about 10% of people with schizophrenia. It can also occur in people with major depressive disorder or bipolar I disorder.

Jail is a particularly challenging place for a person with that combination of symptoms, according to Walsh-Messinger. A person who is suffering from paranoia may fear food prepared by other people, or may only feel safe eating a single type of food. Jail staff may not understand the difference between a person with a mental illness and a person feigning symptoms, or on a hunger strike.

Baskin’s family and disability rights advocates say he died from neglect in custody, a casualty of Oregon’s extremely fragmented mental health system.

His brother, Trai Baskin, was overseas when Skye died. He said there were many opportunities for people to intervene and get Skye medical care.

“Over and over again, those steps were missed,” he said. “It’s a recipe for a tragedy.”

‘A system that wasn’t prepared to care for him’

On March 1, the Oregon State Police’s non-emergency line received calls about a man wandering in traffic on the Interstate 5 bridge north of Roseburg. One person reported the man had jumped.

An Oregon State Police sergeant, Ken Terry, responded and found Baskin still on the bridge.

Baskin was disoriented and would not really communicate, Terry later wrote in an affidavit. He was wearing a hospital bracelet.

Attorney Lee Ann Donaldson, who is investigating Baskin’s death on behalf of his surviving family, said several local organizations were trying to get Baskin care and treatment for a mental illness in the days before he walked onto the bridge.

Roseburg has a mobile crisis team, and a sobering center. Their purpose is to provide an alternative to a law enforcement response for people struggling in public with a mental health crisis or addiction.

Terry instead arrested Baskin. State Police spokesperson Kyle Kennedy declined to explain why Terry didn’t have the mental health crisis team take Baskin instead.

Baskin, Terry wrote, pulled away and raised his fist during the arrest. He was charged with two misdemeanors: resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Dave Boyer, who leads the Mental Health Rights Project for advocacy group Disability Rights Oregon, is also investigating Baskin’s death. He says he doesn’t understand what justified Baskin’s arrest in the first place.

“This seems like a case that would receive a mental health response, ideally,” Boyer said. “He entered a system that wasn’t prepared to care for him, and he died.’

A judge set Baskin’s bail at $5,000. To get out, he needed to post $500. Baskin didn’t have the money.

When Baskin’s public defender, Angelina Hollingsworth, visited him in jail, she said he didn’t seem to recognize she was there.

Hollingsworth successfully petitioned to have Baskin found too mentally ill to aid in his defense. She pushed to have the criminal charges against him dropped, and for Baskin to be released. Prosecutors pushed for court-ordered treatment for mental illness at the state hospital.

While that debate unfolded in court, Baskin wasted away.

‘A terrible way to die’

The U.S. Constitution requires correctional facilities to provide “adequate health care” for those in their custody. In Douglas County, that care is provided by a for-profit contractor, Wellpath, one of the largest jail health care providers in the country.

Walsh-Messinger, the expert on serious mental illness, said hospitalization with a feeding tube is the standard of care for a person who is severely underweight and refusing to eat.

OPB shared the medical examiner’s findings about Baskin’s weight at death with Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin and County Chair Chris Boice.

OPB asked if the county’s staff, or their contractor, Wellpath, had made any efforts to save Baskin’s life.

Hanlin and Boice declined to answer the question.

OPB also shared the findings with Wellpath. Citing medical privacy laws, Wellpath spokesperson Joanie Brady declined to comment or answer questions about Baskin.

Donaldson, the lawyer investigating Baskin’s death for his family, says the records she’s reviewing suggest Baskin was quiet and not causing major trouble in the jail, so he wasn’t given much attention, even when he wasn’t eating.

“When he consistently refused meals or refused recreation or refused to communicate, that wasn’t elevated to a higher level of care,” she said. “This is just a tragic failure of the correctional and mental health systems in Douglas County.”

“Starvation is a terrible way to die.”

Wellpath has come under legal and political scrutiny for the deaths of other people in custody. In Oregon and Washington alone, Wellpath has been sued in at least 10 separate cases that allege wrongful deaths of incarcerated people in the company’s care in the last five years.

The plaintiffs include the family of a man in the Columbia County Jail who allegedly died of a treatable bacterial blood infection; the family of a man in Jackson County who allegedly suffered hemorrhaging in his brain; and the family of a woman in Yamhill County who allegedly died from alcohol withdrawal.

Among the allegations raised in that litigation: the company has a practice of denying people in custody emergency room transfers, until it is too late to save their lives.

Last year, 12 Democratic U.S. senators, including Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, wrote to Wellpath with concerns about the company’s business model and treatment of inmates. They cited reports, and a federal investigation, that found Wellpath was denying medical care to incarcerated people, abusing the use of solitary confinement for people with mental illnesses and operating short-staffed.

They argued that Wellpath’s payment structure incentivizes the company to provide as little care as possible. Unlike hospitals, which can bill more for providing more complex care, Wellpath and other prison health care providers are typically paid a fixed rate per person.

In court filings, Wellpath’s attorneys have denied the wrongful death allegations.

In a response to the senators’ letter, the company pointed out that it operates in a much more challenging environment than most health care providers, working with a sicker population.

The company confirmed that staffing is a challenge, but said government policies during the COVID-19 pandemic are partially to blame, as federal funding for hospitals drove up wages across the nursing industry, but correctional facility health care providers weren’t eligible for it.

A difficult life

Trai Baskin, Skye’s younger brother, is a sergeant in the U.S. Marines. He was in Japan in April when a relative called and told him Skye had died.

The two were close as children. They were born a year apart.

“Skye was the only person that could intentionally make me laugh,” Trai said.

Skye Baskin was born in Georgia and spent much of his childhood in the foster care system. While they were separated from their other siblings, Skye and Trai were kept together. They survived together, helping each other try to act normal at school, envying the kids who complained about their parents.

“I want people to know that his whole life was pretty much a difficulty,” Trai Baskin said.

They grew apart after Trai joined the Marines six years ago and started living overseas. Before his death, Skye Baskin had been staying in Portland with a mutual friend from high school, according to Trai. They’d last talked, a few months before Skye was arrested, about playing video games.

Trai knew his brother had been having symptoms of a mental illness. “I never really saw him like that. I just kind of saw him as my brother,” he said.

“Having to struggle and not be able to eat,” Trai Baskin said “How do you see somebody in that condition, and not want to help?”