Experts ID red flags from jailers and hospital staff in David Batts' death after arrest

Michele Deitch is the director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Jail staffers should have refused to accept Batts because he belonged in the hospital, she said.

It’s problematic, she continued, that only a jail nurse evaluated his medical condition when he was brought there.

“That’s the sort of thing that should be a trigger – not to accept someone like this,” she said. “You don’t want people in your jail who are ‘out of it,’ even if it’s drug intoxication … that’s not who you want in the jail.”