Professor's death defies jail precautions

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-09-01 04:55pm

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news ... 665643.htm

Professor's death defies jail precautions
Mine Ener, charged with killing her baby, was kept in view and routinely checked. Her lawyer alleged negligence.
By Natalie Pompilio and Patrick Kerkstra
Inquirer Staff Writers

A little more than a week ago, Mine Ener, the Villanova professor
who admitted killing her 6-month-old daughter, tried to hang herself with a sheet in a St. Paul, Minn., jail.

After that, Ener was forced to wear Kevlar clothing because it cannot be tied into a noose. Her mattress was placed in the direct sight of deputies in the jail control room. She routinely spoke with a prison psychiatrist.

But on Saturday afternoon, Ener, 38, was found dead with a plastic garbage bag over her head and a blanket covering her entire body in the common room of the Ramsey County jail within view of 11 inmates.

The investigation has just begun, and the county medical examiner has not released an official cause of death. But for now, "every indication is that it was an act of suicide," Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said.

And so the case, which began with questions, raises even more: Why wasn't the troubled woman more carefully monitored or in a psychiatric ward? Did the system fail Ener as she apparently failed her child?

"This is clearly negligence. Apparently she was not on a suicide watch, and that just baffles me," said Joseph Friedberg, Ener's lawer. "How can she be left alone when she tried to kill herself in custody?"

If Ener did commit suicide, first she had to obtain a plastic bag, which is not easy to come by in jail, Fletcher said.

Second, she had to time her attempt to coincide with the jail's 3 p.m. shift change.

Third, she hid herself beneath a blanket, which apparently allowed her to suffocate herself without alerting the on-duty deputy or any of the inmates who could see her through partitions. The move did not attract attention because inmates often cover themselves to sleep in the bright room.

Acting on a psychiatrist's orders to check Ener every 30 minutes, a deputy spoke briefly with the inmate at 2:45 p.m. By 3:15, when another check was scheduled, a different deputy concluded that Ener was asleep.

At 3:45, the deputy who had checked her at 3:15 pulled the blanket away to find Ener dead.

In a statement yesterday, Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said that special precautions had been in place to protect Ener from harm, but that "the manner in which she took her own life suggests that she was committed to overcoming these security measures."

A tenured history professor at Villanova University, Ener was the director of the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies there. Friends had described her as a kind and driven woman who was rising swiftly in her profession.

Last year, she married Ron Y. Donagi, a University of Pennsylvania professor, and the pair welcomed their daughter, Raya Donagi, in February. The family moved into a new home in Wynnewood, Montgomery County, in July.

But despite the appearance of success, Ener was struggling internally. In her confession to police, she said she had slumped into a deep depression after Raya's birth. The baby had Down syndrome and initially needed to be fed through a tube in her nose. Exhausted and suicidal, Ener took the baby to St. Paul at the end of July.

It was there on Aug. 4, in the house she had grown up in, that Ener killed her baby, authorities said. Police said she had told them that she pressed the blade of a 12-inch knife twice across Raya's throat because she did not want the child "to go through life suffering." Raya bled to death.

Since her arrest, Ener had been taking antipsychotic and antidepressant medications, and Friedberg said the drugs "were clearly kicking in" when he met with her last week.

"She was clearly coming to grips with what she'd done, and that's a dangerous time," Friedberg said. "It's the guilt that killed her."

Friedberg placed the blame for Ener's death on Gaertner, who, he said, had made a point of saying she would be tough on parents who kill their children. A month before the Ener case, a St. Paul woman threw her 14-month-old twin sons into the Mississippi River, then jumped in herself. The woman and one boy survived, and the mother is now charged with intentional second-degree murder and attempted intentional second-degree murder.

In the aftermath of that woman's case, Gaertner told reporters that lawmakers might consider making the murder of a child an automatic first-degree murder charge with "enhanced penalties."

"By moving [Ener] to a psychiatric ward, they would have implied that she is mentally ill, and the county attorney has gone out of her way to say there is no illness here," Friedberg said.

Friedberg said he did not ask for Ener to be placed in a psychiatric ward because he did not have the basis to do so. He said he also had feared that doing so would cause county officials to dig their heels in and keep her in the jail.

Gaertner responded in a statement yesterday:

"He had an opportunity at the court hearing [on Wednesday] to express any concerns he might have had about the circumstances of Ms. Ener's confinement or to seek a mental evaluation. He did not express any such concerns or request an evaluation. His only request was to have Ms. Ener's first court appearance continued to a later date. Now he is blaming others for the death of his client. I am dumbfounded by his comments and unclear as to his motives."

Minneapolis defense lawyer Earl Gray said Friedberg could have requested that Ener be placed in a psychiatric ward, but that the local judiciary would most likely have ignored his request, deferring to the county's wishes, Gray said.

"Judges are reluctant to get involved here, because they don't have to," Gray said. "The judge will say, 'She's in the custody of the Ramsey County executive branch, and I won't interfere.' "

This is not the first high-profile Minnesota murder case to end with the self-suffocation of the suspect. In 1992, Russell Lund, a multimillionaire accused of murdering his estranged wife and her boyfriend, killed himself by placing a plastic bag over his head while confined to the mental-health ward of a Minneapolis hospital. Friedberg was also Lund's attorney.

"Everybody looks at everybody else and says, 'You should have done something,' but if someone really wants to commit suicide, they'll do it any place they're at," Gray said. "She put a garbage bag over her head. That's kind of an egregious way of going."

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2003-09-01 04:57pm

Bah, fuck her. If they had stuck her in a barren room with no sheets, furniture, and the like to prevent her from comminting suicide, her lawyer would have bitched.

Basic fact, if someone is intent on commiting suicide, there is little if nothing you can do to stop it. At some point, they'll succeed.

Not that I would weep for the bitch anyway.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2003-09-01 05:03pm

They tried their hardest to keep her alive, how the hell can they say the jail was negligent?!?

Datana · Post by **Datana** » 2003-09-01 05:06pm

She deserved far worse, and her lawyer is complaining? This makes me sick.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-09-01 05:34pm

Fuck, I knew her. This whole thing is fucking shocking.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-09-01 05:36pm

This isn't Red's ex-professor, is it?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-01 05:40pm

And so the case, which began with questions, raises even more: Why wasn't the troubled woman more carefully monitored or in a psychiatric ward? Did the system fail Ener as she apparently failed her child?

She didn't "fail" her child; she MURDERED her child. Her death would only be comparable to her child's death if the police came into her cell and slit her throat.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2003-09-01 05:56pm

HemlockGrey wrote:Fuck, I knew her. This whole thing is fucking shocking.

WHAT?!? How'd you know her?!?

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-09-01 06:32pm

Durran Korr wrote:This isn't Red's ex-professor, is it?

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Dr. Ener was actually the first Villanova professor I ever met. When I was in high school and still touring colleges, I sat in on her class during one of my Villanova visits. My freshman year there, she was my world history seminar professor and managed to remember me.

I know I'm nowhere near objective about any of this, but this woman was not a monster. She cracked up and did something horrible, and now it seems she took the only honorable way out.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-09-01 06:54pm

RedImperator wrote:She cracked up and did something horrible, and now it seems she took the only honorable way out.

Yes, I would agree, this is the only appropriate thing she could do to atone.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-09-01 06:55pm

WHAT?!? How'd you know her?!?

Almost but not quite the same way Red does; through Villanova.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-09-01 07:29pm

RedImperator wrote:
I know I'm nowhere near objective about any of this, but this woman was not a monster. She cracked up and did something horrible, and now it seems she took the only honorable way out.

There is no honorable way out of such a crime

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-09-01 07:42pm

Sea Skimmer wrote: There is no honorable way out of such a crime

Oh yes there is...being summarily shot by a firing squad who aim
for the gut and leave you to bleed to death.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-09-01 07:56pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Oh yes there is...being summarily shot by a firing squad who aim
for the gut and leave you to bleed to death.

I mean via your own actions

Post by **Colonel Olrik** » 2003-09-01 08:03pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:
MKSheppard wrote:
Oh yes there is...being summarily shot by a firing squad who aim
for the gut and leave you to bleed to death.
I mean via your own actions

There is always a way out. After doing her time in jail, she could have sold everything in her possession and bought an one way ticket to the poorest country in Africa, to spend the rest of her life as a red cross nun, saving children from starvation.

Andrew J. · Post by **Andrew J.** » 2003-09-01 09:16pm

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:
RedImperator wrote:She cracked up and did something horrible, and now it seems she took the only honorable way out.
Yes, I would agree, this is the only appropriate thing she could do to atone.

Suicide is not honorable, nor does commiting it atone for anything one has done.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-09-01 11:02pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Oh yes there is...being summarily shot by a firing squad who aim
for the gut and leave you to bleed to death.

There's no death penalty in Minnesota, so killing herself is in fact the best she could do.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-09-01 11:05pm

Andrew J. wrote:
Suicide is not honorable, nor does commiting it atone for anything one has done.

Worthless Christian moral concept. There are certain situations in which suicide is entirely appropriate. Considering that the state of Minnesota--upon which we shall of course utter not a word of question *dripping sarcasm--has seen fit not to have a death penalty, suicide was the only reasonable course. Had this been a death penalty crime, she could have seen that she had an incompetent defence, got herself convicted, and then declined appeal. Though even then some progressive idiots try to use that as a reason to commute the sentence to life in prison.

Naturally there are other situations where suicide is also entirely appropriate. Life, as such, is overrated. We all die, and it is really far better to choose how you die than to try and worthlessly prolong your life. In her case, she'd already demonstrated her life was totally worthless--so the best she could do was end it as quickly as possible, which she succeeded in doing. Quite good.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2003-09-01 11:15pm

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:
Andrew J. wrote:
Suicide is not honorable, nor does commiting it atone for anything one has done.
Worthless Christian moral concept. There are certain situations in which suicide is entirely appropriate. Considering that the state of Minnesota--upon which we shall of course utter not a word of question *dripping sarcasm--has seen fit not to have a death penalty, suicide was the only reasonable course. Had this been a death penalty crime, she could have seen that she had an incompetent defence, got herself convicted, and then declined appeal. Though even then some progressive idiots try to use that as a reason to commute the sentence to life in prison.

Spare the condescension, Marina. There are still death penalty debates routinely in Minnesota, but the state has not found the pro argument sufficiently compelling in the almost 90 years since the abolishment of the death penalty to bring forth legislation reinstating it.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-09-02 01:20am

Remembers a certain cancer ridden Nazi, who after being told that there was no way in hell he could ever get out of prison, slit his own throught, using nothing more then a soft nylon zipper. (the kind that are designed not to be abrasive....)

If Hess could off himself with 130 guards it's possible for someone else to do it too.

Andrew J. · Post by **Andrew J.** » 2003-09-02 09:58am

The Duchess of Zeon wrote: Worthless Christian moral concept. There are certain situations in which suicide is entirely appropriate. Considering that the state of Minnesota--upon which we shall of course utter not a word of question *dripping sarcasm--has seen fit not to have a death penalty, suicide was the only reasonable course.

By committing suicide, she escaped her punishment. Justice was not done. The only honorable course to take was for her to accept her life sentence and serve it until she died of old age.

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2003-09-02 10:13am

Andrew J. wrote:By committing suicide, she escaped her punishment. Justice was not done. The only honorable course to take was for her to accept her life sentence and serve it until she died of old age...

...while it costs the state a fortune to pay for her upkeep.

IMHO she did society a favour by offing herself.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-09-02 10:14am

She killed herself. I only wish all the murderous trash like would have the decency to do likewise.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-09-02 08:24pm

Andrew J. wrote:
By committing suicide, she escaped her punishment. Justice was not done. The only honorable course to take was for her to accept her life sentence and serve it until she died of old age.

Only if you think a life sentence is fitting for a crime like that. I don't. I think letting such a person live is a travesty, and I'm quite pleased that she killed herself rather than receive an insufficient punishment for her crime.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2003-09-02 08:30pm

Technically, since her sentense was to spend the rest of her life in prison, she did serve it...

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Professor's death defies jail precautions

Professor's death defies jail precautions

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