All language subtitles for TIME.The.Kalief.Browder.Story.Part.3.720p.HDTV.x264-W4F

[rattling]

- Well, today we look
at the incredible story

of Kalief Browder,
the 16-year-old

high school sophomore jailed at
Rikers Island for three years.

- Nearly 800 days of that time,

he was held in solitary
confinement.

[banging]

[muffled shouting]

- Solitary confinement,
it was just torture,

just being in my cell
was torture.

- Maintained his innocence
and requested a trial,

but was only
offered plea deals,

while the trial was
repeatedly delayed.

- Delay after delay after delay

when their case had no basis.

- Did you rob somebody in
the beginning part of May,

Mr. Browder?
- No. No.

- Kalief went through this whole
ordeal over a backpack.

- Plead guilty today,
and you can go home.

- What do you do?

- They're not gonna make me say
I did something

that I didn't do.

I went to court about 30 times.

- And then nothing happens.

And then nothing happens again.

- Then I went back
to solitary confinement.

- Solitary induces
a breakdown of the brain.

- What he went through would
break a grown man

with a military background
who had been trained for this.

- I just felt like
I had to fight.

- He said, "No, I want to make
this system work."

- Doesn't mean
he's a perfect person,

but the stand that he took
was perfect.

[soft dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[radio dial flipping stations]

[ominous music]

♪ ♪

- When I was on Rikers Island,

I must have took about

four or five trips
to solitary confinement.

It wasn't easy.

I practically lost my mind.

You know, I feel like
I have screws loose,

like, I'm never gonna be
the same, like...

- Because now,

you know, I...

it's just...

I don't know,
it's not coming out right.

It's not coming out right.

♪ ♪

- He went through hell,

all on a flimsy,
invalid complaint.

You have to be held accountable.

This is supposed to be
the greatest city in the world,

but look what they're doing.

- 16-year-old Kalief Browder's
now filed a lawsuit

against the city,
the New York Police Department,

the Bronx district attorney,

and the Department of
Corrections.

♪ ♪

- The underlying case
involves stuff

that happened in Rikers Island,

and in solitary especially.

The bigger picture
is solitary itself.

- Good morning, Mr. Browder.

- Good morning.

- We are going to go through

your time in solitary
confinement.

- It's graffiti everywhere.
It's hot and dirty.

Kicked up bacteria
in the toilet--

They stopped putting me
in the shower--

They would write
bogus reports on me--

They used to come into my cell
and tell me,

"You're not leaving the Box,

You're not leaving
solitary confinement."

I was trapped.

[chaotic shouting]

- On October 20, Kalief has
this big gang fight

that was captured on video

where he's beaten down in front
of these officers.

- Listen, correction officers
are not bodyguards.

Correction officers are
responsible for 50 inmates

in a housing area, by himself.

This kid was outnumbered.

If you put him in
general population,

with the hyenas, they eat him.

So you put him in a cell for
his protection,

and it's very bad.

[pounding]

- And you know, I'd never been
to solitary

confinement back then,
and I heard about it.

You know, other inmates used to
tell me about it,

and it used to scare me.

[distant shouting]

- The reality of it is,

solitary confinement
is absolutely torture,

especially on Rikers Island.

- Describe the cell
you were in.

- They called it the Box.

- What's in there?

- Nothing.

- It's a rust-encrusted,

12x8 metal cage.

- You got your mattress,
you got a sink with a toilet.

- Sometimes there's feces
on the wall.

There's infestation with mice.

[squealing]

- No human contact
aside from meals

slid through a slot
three times a day.

- You're like a caged animal.

- What I found is that
people who go in

initially have a determination,
"I can handle this,"

and then that starts to erode.

[pounding]

- They act out,
like an animal,

banging on the cell door.

- People are smashing their head
into the glass.

Screaming incessantly
for hours and hours.

[screaming, pounding]

- It's just so much chaos,
like,

I didn't listen to the rules,
and they--

the correction officers, they
took it in their own hands.

[distant shouting]

- Once he got sent to solitary,

it was a vicious cycle,
he couldn't get out.

Because every time he even
opened his mouth,

they would just write him up.

- On Rikers Island,
there is one answer

to the slightest infraction,
which is solitary confinement.

An inmate will get
what's called a "Ticket."

The length of the sentence
depends on the infraction.

90 days was the max, and that
was for assault on staff.

But that didn't stop
tickets from piling up.

They could say assault on staff,
disobeying orders,

weapons--whatever,
and build it up to years.

[distant shouting]

♪ ♪

- It breaks a person down
emotionally,

physically, mentally.

- In solitary confinement,
inmates do

lost their marbles after
a period of time.

- The prisoners I observed
in solitary confinement

all had a similar
set of symptoms

which were very unusual.

Hallucinations,
delusions, paranoia.

- Increased anxiety,
lack of impulse control,

chronic depression,
appetite and weight loss,

heart palpitations,
sleep problems.

- Babbling incoherently,

people smeared in feces,
makeshift nooses.

- This young man, remember,
is a teenager.

His brain isn't even
fully-formed yet.

- The part of the brain that
matures during adolescence

is the prefrontal cortex.

One of its important functions
is to tamper down

things like aggression, fear.

- We would say things like,
"His brain is being

scrambled by solitary
confinement."

I can only imagine

what Kalief Browder suffered.

- Sometimes I cry myself
to sleep because it's like,

I want to go home,
and it's like,

they're not letting me go home,
and then,

I feel like I lost my childhood,
like I lost my sanity.

- This is somehow a rational way
of dealing with

someone who may have taken
someone's backpack.

[distant shouting]

- Kalief was legally innocent,

but unable to walk
out that door.

[distant shouting]

We should be torturing people
before they're even tried?

What country is that?

- Holding anybody for two years
in solitary

on a pre-trial basis
is inconsistent

with who we say we are
as a nation.

♪ ♪

- Every time I went to court,
I was expecting

to have my day at trial,
and it just...

it was never granted to me.

- You have a right
to a speedy trial,

and "Speedy trial"
is six months.

How on Earth was Kalief Browder

in jail for three years?

♪ ♪

- The Constitution says
that there should be

a reasonable time between
arrest and the trial,

but in New York we have a law
that's called a "Ready rule."

- Everywhere else
basically says,

if you are arrested, your case
must be brought

to trial within
X number of days,

but New York's law doesn't say,

"Must be brought to trial within
X number of days,"

it says the district attorney
must be ready

within X number of days,
and that makes a huge difference

because the way that those days
are calculated

excludes time attributable
to court delays.

- The court delay
in this borough is worse

than any other borough
in the city of New York.

- This is a typical morning
outside the Bronx courthouse.

- Judges are sitting
in criminal courts

with 100 cases at a time.

- There are innocent people
who spend more time

at Rikers than those
who are convicted.

♪ ♪

- Kalief was brought to court
December 10, 2010.

He thinks that, "Okay, finally,
I'm going to trial.

I can state my innocence."

But on December 10th,
they answer "Not ready."

DA's office said they would be
ready in one week.

However, it was impossible
to find a courtroom in a week.

- If there are
no courtrooms available,

and the case has to be
adjourned for three months,

those three months do not count
against the clock.

- And so, you have
some prosecutors

who abuse that fact.

- They come back on
January 28, 2011.

Again, same thing.

They request another week.

- It was just,
"We're not ready for trial,

we're not ready for trial."

- He had trial delay
after trial delay,

had prosecutors
knowing full well

that they wouldn't get
another court date

for weeks at a time.

- They come back
on March 9, 2011.

The excuse that day was

there were conflicts
in the DA's schedule.

- Most of the time, those
adjournments are for nothing.

And it just keeps
getting adjourned

and adjourned and adjourned.

- Now it's going on, like,
six months at this point,

that they say they're gonna
be ready in a week,

and they haven't been
ready at all.

- And no time is charged
to the speedy trial clock.

- You go back to court,
and then you find out

that they're not ready for
trial, and it's just--

it's just heartbreaking,
and it's like,

I felt like they was just
playing with my life.

♪ ♪

- Kalief is sitting
in solitary.

♪ ♪

- Prosecutors, they don't
think about that.

They have no concern
about that.

He's not even human to them.

That's just a fact.

- There are absolutely
prosecutors

who act insidiously

because the system
allows them to.

- The Bronx DA,
Robert Johnson,

should be ashamed that this
happened under his watch.

- The real fear here should be

that we are allowing people
to remain on the streets

who commit other crimes.

- Robert Johnson was the DA
for a long time.

I think someone
in power that long

is corrupted by power,

and becomes lazy by power,

and refuses to acknowledge

the problems and institute
steps to address it.

- The Bronx was a really
poorly-run county.

Rob Johnson was not
an effective DA.

He was the kind of guy,
he'd offer you

as many years as he could, even
if you were a decent kid.

- The prosecutors left Kalief

in circumstances
at Rikers Island

that could break anyone,

saying, "I bet you
we can get Kalief

to plead guilty
without letting him out."

That is a very simple calculus,

and it works.

- Almost everybody pleads out,
not because

everybody is guilty,

because people crumble
under the pressure.

- You want me to just
plead guilty

to something I didn't do?

It was more personal to me.

Like, no way.
I'm not--I didn't do it.

- He demanded his day in court,

and they were gonna
punish him for that.

[drilling, pounding]

[dramatic music]

[pounding, shouting]

♪ ♪

- When I was in solitary,

I used to see people
talking to themselves.

I used to say that, "He's crazy,
he's really talking to them,"

and when I was a kid,
I used to laugh at that stuff,

you know, and it's like,

now I'm talking to myself.

- Spending time
in solitary confinement

was incredibly stressful
if you're awaiting trial,

because you don't know
what the future holds.

For someone like Kalief,
he has no idea

how long he's gonna be there.

The Bronx court has just been
incredibly backlogged.

Individuals spend months
and sometimes years

awaiting their day in court.

And then you throw on top of
that solitary confinement?

- In most cases,
people become so distraught,

so desperate,
and so out of control...

♪ ♪

They can't stop thinking about
what they're thinking about.

They become obsessional,

and the obsession can be
about anything.

It could be about the water
dripping upstairs,

or something that
a corrections officer did

that offended them,

and they become enraged,
and they think about it,

and they can't stop
thinking about it.

♪ ♪

- I remember officers walking
down the walkway,

and they had big, green plastic
bags over their uniforms,

because when they walk
down there,

the inmates are gonna throw
urine and feces at 'em.

- The inmates squirt as you walk
by through the mesh.

- Corrections officers
who are working

have no training,
no introduction

to the psychiatric effects
of solitary confinement.

- They weren't trained to deal

with seriously
mentally ill people.

A lot of the guards,
their attitude is,

"You're screwing with me.
Why you screwing me?"

The guard doesn't think this
poor guy has schizophrenia.

Um, he thinks this guy
is being defiant.

♪ ♪

- In summer, in solitary,
the cells were very hot.

Around this time, you know,

some of the correction
officers, I had problems with.

- Who were they?
- Heartz.

- I used to beg him
with my green cup.

"Some ice? You want some ice?

You want some ice?
You not getting no ice."

- An inmate was left
in an overheated cell.

He was left there
despite his complaints,

despite asking for help.

- Temperatures reached, I think,
over 100 degrees.

- The tabloids described it as
he "Baked to death."

- Jerome Murdough
was a Marine veteran

picked up on a trespassing
charge while sleeping

in a stairwell of an upper east
side project.

A week later, he died

in a sweltering jail cell
in a special observation unit.

- He's in a cell.

He's supposed to be monitored.

And he's dead?

- Mr. Murdough essentially
got the death penalty,

simply for being arrested
for trespassing.

- Mrs. Murdough did not learn
of her son's death

until she received a call
one month later.

♪ ♪

- Kalief was my son.

As a mother, as a parent,

you're supposed to protect
your kids,

and I wasn't able
to protect him.

They took that right
away from me.

♪ ♪

But at least,
when I went to Rikers,

I could see him.

That was an all-day trip.

I took the 36 bus
at West Farms.

Then I would catch the 5
to 59th Street.

I took the N train
to Queens Plaza.

[rattling]

And you take the bus

over the bridge...

♪ ♪

And you finally get to see
who you came to see.

♪ ♪

You can see your child,

but you can't take
your child home.

They told me that
"It's a BS case,

don't worry about it."

That BS case took three years.

- According to
the Supreme Court,

everybody has a right
to a lawyer.

But it doesn't mean you have
a right to a good lawyer.

It doesn't mean you have
a right to a lawyer

that doesn't have 800 cases
just like yours.

♪ ♪

- When I was at Legal Aid,

there was a real
culture of excellence,

but we were always understaffed
and overworked.

- Their caseloads
were overwhelming.

There's no real staff
or investigators.

♪ ♪

- The public defender seemed
on the up and up.

But every time
I asked the question,

he would come back with,
"Well, the prosecution

has the right to do this,
and the prosecution..."

I'm like, "Is he working
for Kalief

or working
for the prosecution?"

- I don't know why
Mr. Browder's lawyer

let that case go on
as long as it did.

You'll have to ask him.

- Um...Jesus.

- I'm not saying he had
complete control over it,

but I guarantee you,
he could have

asserted more control
than he did.

- Kalief barely even spoke
to his own attorney.

In fact, his attorney was still
sending Kalief

letters to his mother's house

reminding him
of his next court date.

[shutter clicking]

He had to know
Kalief was in jail.

Like, why send the letter
to his mother's house?

It just shows you
how oblivious he was.

- I'm sitting in the courtroom
waiting to see my son.

That's an extra visit for me.

- My mom, she was there for me.

Every court date, she was always
in the stands.

♪ ♪

- And if you're
standing in court,

and you attempt to turn around

to even look
at your family member,

you don't even get that.

- Soon as I come out the room,
I would look at my mom,

and I would smile at her,
and she'd smile at me.

- "Turn around. Turn around.
Face forward."

- Face forward.

- I would have to turn
back around

and walk through that door,
and I see my mom,

and I see my mom
tearing and crying.

- Knowing that I'm helpless,

the only thing I can do
was cry.

- I tried to keep it strong,
you know, for my mom,

but it just--it just breaks me

just seeing my mom
cry like that.

- He just looked so hurt.

- And I'm sitting there...

- It's okay.
- And there's nothing I can do.

You know, I couldn't
take him home.

And he just looked so, like,
"When is this gonna end?"

- And then after I walk
back through that door,

and I don't see my mom anymore,

it's like I'm walking
right back into hell.

- They are playing a game,

and the game is time.

[rattling]

[buzzing]

In all kinds of ways.

- Let's continue.

- I had gotten into an argument

with one of
the correction officers.

- Who was this?

- His name was Heartz.

He didn't put me in the shower
for about two weeks.

I stank so bad
I literally smelled myself.

He thought it was a game.

Everything was a joke to him.

- He was told,
"We're gonna break you."

[dramatic music]

- When I went to visit him,

he told me all the different
things that was going on,

and I see he was
like 130 pounds.

I'm like, "Kalief,
why are you not eating?"

- They would give him a tray

of somebody else's
half-eaten food.

Kalief didn't accept it.

Why should he?

- In solitary confinement,
they control

how much food you get,
and when it's time

for feeding,
they give you food.

- Every single time, it just
seemed like he's getting

smaller and smaller and smaller
and smaller and smaller.

- If you say anything that
could tick them off

in any type of way, some of
them, which is a lot of them,

they'll starve you,
they won't feed you.

If they starve you one tray,
that--that could really

make an impact on you,
and I was starved a lot.

I can't even--
I can't even count.

And I was just begging
for bread and--

and stuff like that.

♪ ♪

- Do you know what
it's like to hear

that your son is being starved?

- I didn't--
I didn't do the crime,

and then I'm being mistreated
while I'm in here,

and you want me
to just plead guilty

to something I didn't do?

- In my last year on the bench,
I had two

criminal trials in an entire
year, a 12-month year,

but I did 50 sentences.

- You have the right to a
trial, it's constitutional,

but we simply don't have
enough judges,

enough prosecutors,
enough defense attorneys,

and so the reality is that, um,

without plea bargaining,
the system would collapse.

♪ ♪

- On June 23, 2011,

there was a plea offer made
from the DA of 3 1/2 years.

Kalief was not taking a plea.

He refused it and was
maintaining his innocence.

- Way I seen it was,
I didn't do it.

You're not gonna--
you're not gonna make me say

I did something just so
I could go home.

If I got to stay here just to
prove that I'm innocent,

then so be it.

- He fought back
in his own way.

He said, "No, I'm not going
to plead guilty

"to a crime I didn't commit.

"I won't do it.
I want to take my case to trial.

I want to make this system
work for me."

That almost never happens.

- There's a resilience

that's a form of moral genius.

If I submit to this,

I let myself down,

and there's some things
more important than my comfort.

- It was personal to me,
like, "No way.

I'm not taking it."

- Because on the day
you stand up in court

and plead guilty, you lose civil
and constitutional rights

that you had as
a non-convicted felon,

and you never get them back
again, never.

♪ ♪

- Even a minor
criminal conviction

can cause you
to lose your public housing.

Can cause you to lose your job.

Can cause you to never be able

to apply for federal financial
aid to go to college.

- Especially in the age
of the Internet,

just a few keystrokes,
and suddenly,

your employer knows.

Suddenly your educational
institution knows.

And escaping that,
in our country,

is virtually impossible.

You're branded
for the rest of your life.

- He knows how the world
depicted felons,

and so that's why
he didn't take his plea.

He was like,
"I don't want to be a felon."

He didn't want
to end up like me.

♪ ♪

[static]

[radio chatter]

- Responsible for attacking at
least 11 girls in the Bronx.

- The hunt for
the Bronx Rapist.

- When I got arrested,
it was out of nowhere.

I was bringing Nicole, Kamal,
and Kalief home from school.

- I remember laughing
and talking with him,

and, um, right in front
of my mom's house,

the detectives
threw him on the floor.

- Kalief was the youngest one,

and he saw his brother
being kidnapped

and hauled off by police.

They took me
to the 48th Precinct.

- We are present in room 1,

1D of the Bronx 48th Precinct.

- Police say 15-year-old
Akeem Browder

is responsible for attacking

at least 11 girls in the Bronx.

Cops say their lucky tip came
Thursday evening

when a woman approached them
and pointed out

the person who she said tried
to kidnap her daughter.

- That girl, we used to take

the bus together
to go to school.

One day, we both walked
from the bus stop

and decided to cut school.

We both walked
to the side of the school,

and basically, she was
giving me oral sex.

The security came,

and I ran 'cause I got scared.

I'm not at all saying
it was appropriate.

It was just something
that we did as kids.

When I got arrested,
I wrote the statement

saying about what me
and this girl did.

"Yeah, I was with this girl."

But the way that
they portrayed it

is that I'm the Bronx Rapist.

They said they caught
the Bronx Rapist.

My face there, and the words
"Bronx Rapist caught."

I'm not the Bronx Rapist, and
I didn't do those things.

- Police still admit
during the manhunt

they were stopping both
Hispanic and black men

on the street who fit
the description.

They released these two
sketches saying

they were looking for
a light-skinned Hispanic.

- They thought I was
26 years old,

but I was 15.

- The question now:
why the confusion?

Students who know Akeem
from elementary

as well as high school say

he would never do
anything like this.

- That's bull. It's bull!
- It's bull!

- It can't--I doubt it.
- I thought the guy died.

- He would never
do that to a girl.

- He wouldn't.

He's not like that.

- All the media was out there.

Channel 7, channel 11,
you name it.

They were all
banging on the door.

My dad closed the blinds,

turned off all the lights.

The next night, helicopters
all over my house.

[helicopters whirring]

Shining in my window.

♪ ♪

There was a lot of
hiding us in a room,

making sure media
don't get to us,

hiding us from school.

- I'm sure it affected
all my brothers and sisters,

but after that, Kalief had
a fear of police.

- I used to be
the type of person,

I used to call
numbers on the phone.

And rack my mom's phone bill up.
I seen 1-800-LAWYERS.

- If you've been hurt
by anything:

a car accident, a fall,
a doctor, or a hospital.

- "Um, I have a brother,
he did a lot of bad stuff,

and he needs a lawyer."

He was like,
"Is your mom around?"

I was like, "Okay," and I put
my mom on the phone,

and that's how they got, uh,
cornbread or somebody?

Marvyn Kornberg
is a high-profile,

prolific attorney.

Marvyn Kornberg
represented the officers

who shot Amadou Diallo
42 times.

- Amadou!
all: Amadou!

- To indict these police
officers for intentional murder,

to me, is ludicrous.

- They had to
refinance the house

to get the money
for the lawyer.

- Every court date that I went
to, my mom went to.

I remember the anxiety
on my mother's face.

The tears. The crying.

- The district attorney,
Robert Johnson,

also happens to be the same

district attorney
that tried Kalief.

Marvyn Kornberg
told my mom that

we have to wait till it dies
down out of the news

so that we can deal with it.

But I was 15, and they waited
until I turned 16

so that I can be given a charge
as an adult,

which would make me a felon
instead of a youth offender.

- I'm not your mother.
This is not the family court.

And this is not school.
I put people in jail here.

♪ ♪

- And now,
I'm a registered felon.

I have to deal with this
for the rest of my life.

- It was personal to me,
like, I knew sometimes

people are found guilty
of things they didn't do,

but that was the risk
I was willing to take,

'cause I'm not gonna plead
guilty to something I didn't do,

and--and then everything's
all right.

It's not all right.

- This kid, who America had
shat on all this time,

is the last patriot standing,

insisting that our court system
be fair.

And that innocents matter.

Doesn't mean he's
a perfect person.

But the stand that he took
was perfect.

- When I was on Rikers Island,

sitting in solitary
confinement,

I would say I went to court
about 30 times.

[engine revving]

Most of those times,
I didn't see my lawyer,

a judge, or anything.

I would just go,
and I would be shackled.

Everything was just
moving too slow.

- It's justice in a water drip
kind of way.

Drip, drip, drip.

You get so frustrated,
you get so

beat down by the system
that you say, "You know what?

"I can't deal with it anymore.

I'm gonna just plead guilty."

- I'm proud
that he didn't give in.

But at the same time,
being that I'm his mother,

I'm saying to myself,
"Oh, Lord, please.

Just--just say yeah.
Say yeah."

But that was me, 'cause I wanted
him to come home.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

When I used to go see Kalief,

that takes a toll on me.

I would have to bite
on my bottom lip

so that I would feel the pain
from biting my lip

instead of the pain
in my back and my legs.

You cry on the way there.

♪ ♪

You cry while you're there.

And then you cry
on the way back.

♪ ♪

- Before my brother
was put into the system,

she wasn't like this.

She was happy.

["You Beat Me to the Punch"
by Mary Wells]

- ♪ The day ♪

♪ I first saw you, oh, whoa ♪

♪ Passing by ♪

♪ I wanted ♪
Come on!

♪ To know your name ♪

♪ But I ♪

♪ Was much too shy ♪

We sing.
We sing the oldies.

♪ ♪

The Supremes, Mary Wells,

Stylistics.

Got to do the steps! [laughs]

♪ And beat me to the punch ♪

I mean, it was just--
we had so much fun.

I love it. I love it.

♪ ♪

[music fades]

[winding]

- After my arrest,

where the system first entered
into our family,

my mother's health
started declining.

She had her first heart attack
in 2000.

The stress that she endured

was more than
what she could handle.

There's a lot of things
that can happen

to your family
when the courts get involved.

My mother started having

a whole lot of health issues.

- I have congestive
heart failure.

- One doctor told me two years.

Another doctor told my son
I have five years.

- Once Kalief was arrested,
she got worse.

Everything that Kalief
was going through,

she went through it with him.

- One time I went,
and I got sick.

♪ ♪

I'm diabetic.
I'm supposed to carry candy.

Something sweet.

But as I was going through
the glass metal detector,

they took it from me.

And when I get sick,
there's no warning.

[radio chatter]

♪ ♪

Next thing I knew, they took me
to the hospital.

The only thing on my mind

was I didn't get to see Kalief.

♪ ♪

He's still there.

And my heart hurts
from sadness.

♪ ♪

- I tried to keep it strong,
you know, for my mom,

but it just--
nothing was going right.

[screaming]

Before I went to sleep, like,

the images, and...

I don't know, like...

- When did you start
talking to yourself?

- I don't remember.

- Do you remember
telling professionals

that you were hearing voices

telling you bad things
about yourself?

- I was pacing
up and down the tier--

I told them, "I'm not going
back in my cell."

I was noncompliant,
and I felt rebellious

because I didn't do anything.

- I mean, that's the irony
of the system.

The worst abuses
do happen to the innocent

because they don't
play by the rules.

If you are not willing
to show remorse

and admit guilt,
the system will screw you.

And who isn't willing
to show remorse?

Well, someone who didn't do it
in the first place.

How can you show remorse for
a crime you didn't commit?

- What happened?
- They gave me more Box days.

♪ ♪

- And it just seemed
like everything

was going against him.

- On my way to the Box,
they were slamming me

face first into walls,

face first into doors,

and face first
into garbage cans.

- Oh, see me? See me now?

Now you want to do that
'cause I can't see, right?

Yo, what you doing this for?

- The fact that a person
is innocent

makes it much worse.

Because there is no
sense of propriety.

There's no sense that what's
happening to me

is something that I deserve.

It's just being
in a Kafkaesque world,

a world where you're suddenly

being taken over
by these malevolent forces.

[radio chatter]

That's a terrifying
thing to experience.

- It was just too much.

I couldn't take it anymore.

The Box was driving me crazy.

I just needed a way out.

[rattling]

But there was no way out.

- You hear stories
of Rikers Island.

There's no wrong and right.

Kalief did not deserve to be
in solitary confinement.

It's a lot to ask
of a 16-year-old child.

It's inhumane.

[screeching]

- Chronic social isolation
seems to become

permanently damaging for all
kinds of different animals.

[howling]

Cells that are derived from
animals that have undergone

chronic social isolation,
they actually grow differently.

The cells themselves
change their structure,

they change their function.

Instead of making neurons,
these stem cells

were actually making
more stem cells.

The point, I think, is not
to treat it lightly.

- This demonstrator being
carted away by officers.

- In response to animal
rights activity,

the regulatory body
that oversees

laboratory animal research
now requires

for animals to be housed
together.

This is sort of ironic,
that we require

our animals to be co-housed,

while we do not make this
requirement for humans.

[dramatic music]

- Kalief had been in solitary
confinement for 10 months.

Then, finally, he got out,

and he went back
to general population.

- What would happen after they
left solitary confinement,

the younger ones
were more vulnerable,

they got into more fights,

they tended to not realize
their limitations.

- Do you know why you didn't
remain in general population?

- Yes.
- Why?

- Because I had a fight.

- 95% of these people
are gonna get out

in solitary confinement.

Out of control,
emotionally unable

to manage,
impulsive, rageful.

♪ ♪

- Kalief had a fight
with another inmate, and boom.

[rattling]

He's back in solitary.

This time, he's there
for a long time.

♪ ♪

His case has been on for trial

several times at this point,

and it didn't seem like
it was going anywhere.

- The DA had an obligation.

In order to be ready for trial,

a witness has to be
reachable and available.

- 911 operator,
what's your emergency?

♪ ♪

[rattling]

[horses neighing]

[siren wailing]

- They said they had
a witness in Mexico.

- The witness that they felt
that they had

was no longer in the country.

- The person wasn't even
in the United States.

The person left,

but you let my son
rot in there.

- All the stress from my case,

everything was just
getting to me.

Everything I been through,
from those correction officers

leading back up to the arrest,

it was more
on a personal level to me,

because it's like,
I didn't do this.

I tried telling
the correction officers

that I wanted to see
a psychiatrist

or a counselor or something.

I was telling them
I need mental help

because I wasn't feeling right.

But they didn't
want to hear me out.

Nobody wanted to listen.

I was falling apart mentally.

I can feel it.
I can tell.

I was staring to feel suicidal.

And nobody wanted
to help me out.

[typewriter keys clacking]

After a while,
I just gave up hope.

I had ripped my bed sheets and
made a noose out of it,

and I had hung it
to the light fixture,

and I was about to jump.

The correction officers
were watching me

do the whole thing.

They were telling me,
"Go ahead and jump.

"You said you were gonna
kill yourself.

What are you waiting for?"

[radio chatter]

The correction officers,
they opened my cell,

and I jumped.

- He's literally in a noose,

hanging off the ground,

and you can see them
looking into his cell,

standing there, doing nothing.

I mean, what were these [bleep]
people doing?

- They opened my cell,
and they were just

standing there watching me.

The captain, he said,
"Before I cut you down,

you're gonna feel
some pain first."

- How long were you up there?

- I don't know.

♪ ♪

- They came in and started
beating him down.

- They grabbed me,
they cut me down,

they threw me on the bed,
gave me a lot of punches,

they stomped me on the bed.

♪ ♪

- He ran out of the cell
to get in the hallway

'cause he knew
there were cameras there.

- They came towards me,

and they were just
swinging on me.

I was scared.

♪ ♪

- Take a really good look.

We drove

Mr. Browder to psychosis.

We did that.