Sixty-one-year-old Janice Dotson-Stephens died on Friday at the Bexar County, Texas, Jail. According to officials, she died of natural causes—specifically cardiovascular disease. Dotson-Stephens had been incarcerated at the jail since July 19, awaiting a hearing on criminal trespass charges, according to KENS5. Dotson-Stephens sat in jail on a $300 bond, $30 (ten percent) of which needs to be paid in order to get someone out of jail. According to ABC affiliate KSAT, Dotson-Stephens refused to be interviewed for four straight days by authorities, was assigned a court-appointed attorney on August 8, and was set to go through a psychological evaluation on August 27—after she refused to appear in court.
However, Refinery29 spoke with the deceased woman’s family, specifically quoting her daughter-in-law Michelle Dotson, who only found out that the grandmother of 10 was in jail and not a state hospital when they were notified of her death.
“Where was the miscommunication?” Dotson asks. “Why wasn’t our grandfather or brother or sister called?”[...]
But this incident was not Dotson-Stephens’ first encounter with law enforcement. Her family says that her mental illness often made her act erratically. In the past, when she’d been picked up by police, her family was notified and she was quickly transferred to the state hospital and put under psychiatric evaluation. This time, that transfer never happened. Instead, she spent months in the county jail.
According to Refinery29, the Bexar County Sheriff’s office could not confirm whether or not Dotson-Stephens had been diagnosed with a mental health condition. The Dotson family is bewildered, saying that Janice had many people who loved her and would have easily put up the money to have her taken out of jail and transferred to a mental health hospital. According to the family, not hearing from Janice for weeks or months at a time was something that could happen when she was off her medications. Anyone who has dealt with loved ones who suffer from mental illness know that this is not an uncommon anxiety for families to have to do deal with.