Getting the Truth Out
A story of injustice, truth, and the fight to expose what lies beneath the surface of the justice system.
Henry needed a hospital. He got a docket number.
The Unjust “Justice”: Getting the Truth Out follows Henry Carmel, a young man living with schizophrenia whose life is devastated after a violent incident leads to a deeply flawed criminal prosecution.
Rather than receiving proper psychiatric care, he becomes trapped within a justice system marked by institutional failure, prolonged confinement, and the concealment of his illness.
Through Henry’s experience, the book examines the stigma surrounding mental illness while raising urgent questions about justice, ethics, and the treatment of vulnerable individuals in society.
Read moreA man in psychiatric crisis meets a prosecution instead of care, and the offices meant to protect the public close around him.
Jail, prison, hospital, parole, civil commitment. The years pass in custody while the family keeps asking for treatment.
Documented diagnoses and medical findings are set aside, and the illness behind the incident goes unseen in court.
What do we owe the vulnerable? The book asks it of courts, of prosecutors, and of everyone who looks away.
It is the author’s hope that on a not distant day this book will alert the public and help stop the abuse of power against, and the criminalization of, the mentally ill.Edward Castellanos
From a cold night in November 1994 to hearings, transfers and hospital reviews in 2005, the book follows Henry and his father Edmund through every stage.
Henry hears banging at the door that no one else hears. The next day, a psychiatrist names the illness.
Trials, a sentence at Walton State Prison, and medication that does not seem to work.
Petitions, hearings and a hospital that recommends release, again and again.