D.J. Rudolph stood there in the courtroom, chained at the waist. If listening to a prosecutor describe how he butchered his mother, sister, and his mother’s boyfriend bothered him, he didn’t show it.
He pursed his lips a couple of times, then turned to stare vacantly at his relatives and the family of Fred Medina, a good man who tried to help his girlfriend’s troubled son and got his throat slit for his efforts.
There are Weymouth cops still haunted by what they found inside the house on Upland Road where 18-year-old D.J. Rudolph is alleged to have used a hammer and a knife to kill his mother, Paula; his 24-year-old sister, Caylin; and Medina.
Many months and considerable dollars will be spent to determine whether D.J. Rudolph is competent to stand trial, as if any kid who could do something like this is anything but criminally insane. Less attention will be paid to the fact that this state’s attitude toward mental health care is insanely criminal.
Since D.J. Rudolph was diagnosed with schizophrenia, his life has been a road map of multiple hospitalizations, various medications, treatments that didn’t work, treatments that weren’t available. Some of his relatives say he couldn’t get the care he needed.
The slayings D.J. Rudolph is accused of committing are shocking. The dearth of resources available for somebody like him is sadly routine.
In 2009, the state spent $685 million on mental health. The current budget is $630 million. It is rare that the mentally ill perpetrate the kind of violence outlined in Quincy District Court yesterday, but the idea that you can reduce services like this and not have consequences is nonsense. It is about the money. That’s why mental health counselor Stephanie Moulton was working alone in a group home in Revere last January when she was stabbed to death by a schizophrenic patient.
Ronnie Lippett, the former Patriots cornerback who took D.J. in as a foster kid, only to have his jaw broken by an unprovoked punch, says D.J. should have been institutionalized. But the state has been cutting institutional beds for years, from 831 in 2007 to 661 now. The Quincy Mental Health Center, the closest facility both to where DJ lived and where he was arraigned on murder charges, was closed by the state two years ago, eliminating 16 beds.
When he was a state rep and then a state senator, there was no better advocate on Beacon Hill for the mentally disabled and mentally ill than Mike Morrissey. He put himself through UMass in Amherst driving a bus for patients at Belchertown State School. Now he is Norfolk district attorney, and yesterday he stood against the courtroom wall, overseeing the start of the long, tortuous prosecution of D.J. Rudolph. “The doctors and experts will have their say,’’ he said.
He didn’t want to get into a debate on what role the drastic cuts in the mental health care he used to champion will mean for the criminal justice system. Instead, Morrissey looked at the rows of grief-stricken people and shook his head. “It is,’’ he said, “what it is.’’
If D.J. Rudolph’s actions were criminal, so is the state’s gutting of mental health services. No expense will be spared to put D.J. away for life. We have no trouble spending money at the end of the line, long after families are ruined.
Maybe throwing all the money in the world at D.J. Rudolph wouldn’t have changed a thing. But let’s stop kidding ourselves that there’s no price to pay when we gut services.
We pay. Nowhere near what the Moultons, the Rudolphs, and the Medinas are paying. But we all pay.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeCullen.