PANAMA CITY — The Bay County Jail inmate who died Tuesday night spent about six weeks in the unit of the jail tasked with preventing suicide, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Robert Charles Batty, 32, had been to court earlier this month and was convicted of violating probation. He was in a section of the jail that housed inmates awaiting transport to the Department of Corrections when he died Tuesday night.
He was last seen alive at 10:47 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office. At 11:16 p.m., corrections officers doing a head count discovered the man had asphyxiated himself with a bed sheet tied off to a hand rail in his cell. Officers and jail medical staff performed CPR until EMS arrived at 11:37 p.m. and pronounced him dead, BCSO said.)
Batty was alone in his cell, and the suicide appeared to have been planned, Warden Rick Anglin said. Lock-down occurred Tuesday night around 10:40 p.m.
“I think he planned it, knowing what the routine was for what we call lockdown and count,” Anglin said.
Batty spent an unusually long time on the jail’s suicide watch, roughly six weeks, Anglin said, and he had been evaluated earlier in the day by a mental health counselor. He gave no indication of his intent to commit suicide during that evaluation, Anglin said.
Inmates who are placed on suicide watch are under “constant, direct observation” as they progress through the three-tiered system, Anglin said. Inmates on level one, the most restrictive level of suicide watch, have basically no privileges and are confined to a stripped-down cell with only a mattress and a shroud for clothes, which is tear-proof to prevent them from hanging or asphyxiating themselves.
They get their clothes back when they progress to level two, and they begin to receive limited privileges such as phone calls. Level three allows for greater privileges, such as access to the commissary and permission to receive visitors. Inmates who progress through level three are released into the general population.
The rate at which an inmate progresses through suicide watch back into the general population is determined by a committee of members of the jail’s medical, mental health and security staffs, Anglin said. After an inmate has been removed from suicide watch they receive regular follow-up evaluations such as the one the inmate underwent Tuesday.
Anglin said his staff does a great job preventing suicides. This was the first suicide at the jail since early in 2009, he said.
“We get [suicide] attempts on a pretty regular basis, and normally we can prevent them,” Anglin said. “Every now and then, when someone really wants to do it and plans it out, it’s hard to stop them.”
Batty had violated the conditions of his probation by failing to report a change of address to his probation officer. He had been sentenced to serve 13 months.
He had no address and was listed as a transient when was arrested in July 2012 on suspicion of rape. He pleaded no contest to battery and was sentenced to two years probation that required him to keep his address current with his probation officer.
Batty listed his address as 609 Allen Ave., the Rescue Mission, during an initial meeting with his probation officer in December, and apparently never checked in again.
An earlier version of this report is posted below:
The inmate Robert Charles Batty, Jr., 32, had been to court earlier this
He was last seen alive at 10:47 p.m. At 11:16 p.m., corrections officers doing a head count discovered the man had asphyxiated himself with a bed sheet. Officers and jail medical staff performed CPR until
Batty violated the conditions of his probation by failing to report a change of address to his probation officer, officials wrote. He had been sentenced to serve 13