Kalief Browder, imprisoned as a teen at Rikers Island without a trial, commits suicide
Kalief Browder, who was imprisoned for three years as a teenager without a trial on New York City's Rikers Island, committed suicide Saturday. He was 22.
At 16, Browder was arrested on suspicion of stealing a backpack. He spent two of his three years at Rikers, known for abuse and neglect of prisoners, in solitary confinement. In 2013, prosecutors dropped charges against Browder, who maintained his innocence.
"I think what caused the suicide was his incarceration and those hundreds and hundreds of nights in solitary confinement, where there were mice crawling up his sheets in that little cell," Browder's lawyer, Paul V. Prestia, told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.
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The New Yorker profiled Browder in 2014.
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