LITTLE ROCK — Second of four parts

Yesterday: Carl Jackson fled Atlanta as symptoms of mental illness consumed him.

Little Rock did not have the calming effect on Carl Jackson that his mother, Pearlie Moore, had hoped.

After his return from Atlanta, Carl didn't want to leave the house. He wrote things in code. Sometimes, he would point to the television and claim he was on the screen.

He sent angry letters to the U.S. Department of Labor and the president of the first Atlanta company that fired him.

Police report after Jackson was arrested can be read here.

He believed company officials had discriminated against him, and God would punish them for it.

Carl was so obsessed - so unable to control his thoughts - he says he couldn't have stopped writing the letters even if he wanted to.

For the next year, he was in and out of hospitals.

A list of the charges against Jackson is available here.

Carl stabilized long enough to get a job and an apartment. But mentally, he could not handle either and he moved back in with Pearlie.

Every time Carl walked out the door, his mother wondered if he'd return.

Police once found him wandering naked through MacArthur Park. Another time, they found him walking through a building at Pulaski Tech wearing only a jean jacket and towel and claiming to be Jesus.

Both times police took him to hospitals for psychiatric care.

Doctors first prescribed medication for schizophrenia but it did not work. Later, they diagnosed him as bipolar.

In the summer of 2005, Carl also learned he had Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus that causes AIDS. Pearlie worried that was more than Carl could deal with.

His situation just got worse after that. Carl took strange people to the house he shared with Pearlie and his stepfather, Arthria Moore.

Carl's irrational behavior and the things he said - once telling Arthria that Pearlie had died - strained Pearlie and Arthria's marriage of 20 years.

Arthria believed the stress of watching Carl spiral out of control was too much for his wife.

On Sept. 10, 2005, Arthria told his stepson to move out.

There was nothing else Pearlie could do except pray.

SEPT. 11, 2005

Carl, unmedicated for three weeks, had spent the night at his father's house in North Little Rock. The next morning, he heard a voice no one else could hear.

"Walk," the voice urged. "Walk."

He ended up at the North Shore Riverwalk, where he stripped to his boxers and wandered through a parking lot.

There he saw a car that had been in one of his visions. In the vision, Carl had smashed one of the windows with his mind. So he walked up to the car and slammed his fist into the glass.

Carl then walked toward a North Little Rock police car parked nearby. He took off his boxers to show the officers in the car he had no weapons.

They arrested Carl, and he was later charged with breaking and entering and public intoxication. Though Carl said he wasn't drinking, the officers believed he was drunk.

He ended up in an isolation cell at the Pulaski County jail, where he lay naked and deranged that Sunday afternoon.

Maybe it was mother's intuition, but Pearlie couldn't shake the feeling that evening that something bad had happened to her son.

The next morning, Arthria called the jail and learned Carl was there. Pearlie could get him out for $2,700 in bond but she had no intention of doing so.

For all she knew, Carl would get out and kill himself.

Over the next 10 days, Carl deteriorated both mentally and physically.

Death dominated his thoughts. One morning he thought Satan was in his cell. The lifelike vision freed Carl, who ran into a burning forest. Above, Carl saw an angel.

"I declare it judgment day," the angel said.

In reality, Carl was on the floor of his cell, with toilet water and urine splashed all around when a nurse came to check on his leg, which was showing signs of a severe infection.

Pearlie had not seen her son, but Arthria worked at the jail and had been told how delusional Carl had become. (Jailers aren't allowed to work on unitswhere relatives are housed.) So Pearlie filed a petition asking a judge to involuntarily commit Carl to the State Hospital for a mental evaluation.

A deputy took Carl to the Sept. 23 hearing in a wheelchair.

He didn't fight his mother's efforts, and by the end of the day, he was at the State Hospital.

But he wouldn't stay long.

MEDICAL INTERVENTION

The next day, Carl was rushed to a nearby emergency room with a staph infection that festered in his right leg during his time in jail. His leg was hot to the touch and swollen from the ankle to the knee.

Carl, then 37, lashed out at his mother and ordered her out of his hospital room. He would never remember the things he said to her that first day.

Though his mental health slowly improved, antibiotics were not clearing up his infection. Surgeons operated four days after he arrived. Doctors told Pearlie that Carl could have lost his leg.

The incisions in Carl's leg, which ran from just above the ankle to just below the knee on both sides of his calf, were open wounds that would take time to heal.

Before his release Oct. 26, Pearlie posted a $2,700 bond so Carl would not have to wait in jail until he could face his charges in court.

Arkansas has a law that would allow a judge to acquit Carl because of his mental illness, but he'd still have to wait for his court date just like everyone else.

WAITING FOR A BED

More than 10 months passed before a judge acquitted Carl on Sept. 5, 2006. By then, doctors had restored his mental health with medication and he was living on his own.

Pulaski County Judge Chris Piazza placed him in the state's publicly-funded, multimilliondollar Conditional Release program for the mentally ill. In 2006, Carl would be one of 116 people so acquitted of felonies and misdemeanors.

Just as those convicted of crimes and placed on probation must meet periodically with a probation officer, Carl was required to meet regularly with a state monitor and to attend therapy.

If he did as the judge ordered, he would be out of the program in five years. The length of time would be the same if Carl had been acquitted of killing someone.

But if a judge revoked Carl's conditional release, the five years would start all over again - no matter how long he'd already been in.

Some of the people in the program when Carl started had been cycling through for 12-15 years.

Had Carl been found guilty, he could have spent up to 30 days in jail for public intoxication and up to six years in prison for the breaking and entering charge. There was no guarantee he'd receive the maximum sentence, and he could have gotten probation and/or a fine.

Carl preferred spending five years in the program over even one more day behind bars. Plus, he thought it would give him insight into his illness.

After Piazza acquitted him, court officials surprised Carl and his mother by placing Carl in handcuffs. State law required he be taken to the State Hospital for an evaluation, but none of the hospital's 218 beds were available. So deputies took Carl back to the Pulaski County jail.

Sheriffs across the state have complained for years about housing the mentally ill. Deputies don't know how to deal with them and the inmates don't get psychiatric treatment.

Jailers got some relief when the Department of Human Services, which oversees the State Hospital, reduced the wait time for pre-trial mental evaluations.

But since that is the state's only psychiatric hospital, that hadn't solved the overall issue.

On Sept. 5, 2006, jail records showed 119 people were in thePulaski County jail waiting for either a bed at the State Hospital or some type of mental evaluation.

Housing the mentally ill only compounded jail crowding. The day Carl arrived, 922 people were in the county lockup - 42 more than it was budgeted to handle.

Lacking money, the county had reduced the number of jail beds from 1,125 to 880, angering police and members of the public, whose fears that criminals would go free proved true.

Three days after Carl arrived, a Little Rock judge held Pulaski County Sheriff Randy Johnson in contempt of court for refusing to accept people he'd sent to jail.

County officials were pushing a quarter-cent tax initiative to cover construction and operation of a larger jail. A week into Carl's jail stay, voters defeated the measure.

Though Carl had been given a bed, he mistakenly believed he wouldn't need it long.

TRANSFERRED, TROUBLED

Pearlie, who had blamed the jail for letting Carl's leg infection get so serious, felt desperate, especially when she learned Carl hadn't gotten his HIV medications for several days until someone brought them in.

So she bought a neon orange posterboard at Wal-Mart 10 days into Carl's stay and crammed nearly 100 words on the brightly-colored background while sitting in the store parking lot.

"Let my mentally ill son go, Pulaski Cty Jail. He was acquitted of a non-serious chgs," she wrote in part.

She held a one-woman rally at the state Capitol. Finally on Sept. 19 - almost two weeks after he'd been jailed - a guard told Carl he'd be leaving for the State Hospital.

Though relieved, Carl felt a stay in a psychiatric hospital was unnecessary. Mentally, he was stable.

Carl quickly realized the hospital had more problems than a shortage of beds.

It could be a volatile environment. Patients routinely assaulted employees - and each other. During the 30 days Carl was there, employees filled out nearly 50 incident reports detailing assaults, including one about a patient on Carl's unit who sprayed someone in the eyes with cleaner.

Legislators would later approve hazard pay for workers on some units, one of which regularly housed people in Carl's program.

Carl also felt that he didn't have much privacy there. Nurses left medical records out and gave medications in front of other patients.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray released Carl on Oct.

18, 2006, after Carl's psychiatrist said he posed no risk of harm to himself or others.

That day he went to his apartment, took a long shower and relaxed for the first time in a month.

He actually looked forward to the group therapy sessions at Little Rock Community Mental Health Center that he'd soon be attending.

For once, he'd be able to talk about his mental illness withoutfear of rejection. Without worrying people were scared to be around him.

The people he would meet there had experienced the same devastating blow to their self-esteem that a diagnosis brings.

MOVING ON

Carl kept to himself mostly, except for a few old friends, his family and the people he met at the mental health center.

Generally, he did well but caseworkers did sometimes note in Carl's file that he still fixated on religion or had grandiose thoughts.

The caseworkers' impressions were important. The court required the center to report concerns to state monitors. The monitors then reported to the court.

The prosecutor who handles mental-health cases in Pulaski County, Margie Lickert, used that information to decide whether she would ask a judge to revoke the release of a program participant.

As of mid-June 2007, Carl's caseworkers had not forwarded anything to prompt a revocation. In fact, he was planning a vacation and the caseworkers seemed to know about it.

After a June 11 visit to his house, a caseworker wrote that Carl seemed excited about a coming trip, despite some health issues he was having.

"Carl was very optimistic and cheerful about going to visit his family in California," she wrote in a progress note kept in his file at the mental health center.

Carl planned to tour San Francisco and spend time with a terminally ill cousin who also struggled with mental illness. Carl thought they'd have a lot to talk about.

The trip would help get his mind off all the things he'd gone through.

By the time he returned to Little Rock, there would be a warrant out for his arrest.

TOMORROW A trip to California offers peace of mind, but ends in arrest.

ABOUT TODAY'S STORY◊

Arkansas ranks behind only Nevada and Arizona among the states with the least number of public hospital beds for the mentally ill, according to a report released March 17 by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Arkansas has 6.7 beds per 100,000 residents, says the center, a nonprofit group that promotes laws, policies and practices that reduce the barriers to timely and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses.

Nevada has 5.1 beds per 100,000 and Arizona, 5.9 beds, the report says. Mississippi has the most beds available - 49.7 per 100,000 people.

The study's authors say 50 public psychiatric beds per 100,000 in each state is the minimum required to provide needed mental health services.

Various other studies estimate thata third of the nation's homeless have a serious mental illness.

Information for this series came from Carl Jackson's mental health, hospital and court records; interviews with more than a dozen people; and information from the State Hospital and Department of Human Services.

For today's story, details about Carl's time in Little Rock came from police reports, psychiatric records, medical records, court records and interviews.

Information about his arrest, time in jail and UAMS stay came from medical and psychiatric records, Pulaski County jail records, interviews, photos of his leg and court records.

Pulaski County jail spokesman John Rehrauer declined to discuss Carl's medical care because of federal privacy laws.

Information about Jackson's entrance into the court system came from court records, interviews and Arkansas Code Annotated 5-2-313 through 316.

Potential sentences for the crimes Carl was acquitted of came from the Office of the Prosecutor Coordinator.

Information about bed space came from the Pulaski County jail and the State Hospital as well as newspaper archives.

Details about Pearlie Moore's efforts to get her son a bed at the State Hospital came from interviews as well as from the sign she made.

Information about Carl's stay at the State Hospital and conditions there came from interviews as well as a foot-high stack of incident reports detailing attacks.

Details of his conditional release came from court records, interviews and his Little Rock Community Mental Health file.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Front Section, Pages 1, 6 on 03/24/2008