Nicholas Searcy

Nicholas Searcy (13 May 1961 – 4 January 1987) was an Australian child prodigy with exceptional abilities in chemistry, maths and physics. He started school at grade two level in 1966 aged four but was prevented from advancing further beyond his academic peer year by the prevailing Western Australian Education Department regulations. In spite of this, he completed his Leaving and University Entrance Exams aged thirteen, but the exam results were not accepted by the state due to his age.

Two weeks prior to repeating his final year exams in 1975, only fifteen years old, he fell victim to jealousy of three older students who surreptitiously dropped a near fatal dose of LSD into his soft drink. Searcy only began receiving medical attention 12 hours later after the ringleader dumped his almost lifeless body on his mother's front lawn the next day at 3am. Searcy recovered to pass his exams with one of the highest results of the year, but the fifteen year old chemistry prodigy subsequently became addicted to drugs. Able to brew his own chemical cocktails, he descended into an impoverished homeless lifestyle of drug addiction until 1984 when he was caught and jailed for 18 months for manufacturing amphetamines.

Following his release in 1986 having shaken his drug addition, he took up a research position into battery technology at Murdoch University. A few months into his research he suffered serious burns from an acid spill at the University and drove at speed without a license to seek medical attention. He was caught and sentenced to 17 days mandatory jail under the then Court Government's controversial Mandatory Sentencing laws (for minor offenses). Searcy died in custody two weeks later, aged twenty five, shackled to his bed.

On his death bed he told his mother "They beat me" referring to the prison guards who dismissed his cries of pain as drunkenness, and evidently resorted to violence when he would not get out of his cell. A coronial investigation found the cause of death to be Fungal meningitis, a rare form, and usually the result of spread of a fungus through blood to the spinal cord. Although anyone can get fungal meningitis, people with weakened immune systems are most at risk. A single dose of LSD can lead to lifelong episodic severe depression and flashbacks. It is likely Searcy acquired fungal infection in prison as a result of a weakened immune system from the initial almost fatal LSD overdose at fifteen and consequential drug addiction. Finding himself in prison unjustly under Mandatory Sentencing laws for an offence that would not otherwise attract a custodial sentence would also have significantly impaired his ability to fight off a fungal infection.

Searcy's death sparked a Newsletter campaign by his mother against the Mandatory Sentencing laws of the Court Liberal Government introduced only months before his acid burns accident at university. Her "Campaign for Prevention of Custodial Death" attracted support from the Australian Aboriginal people, who were overrepresented in Western Australian prisons by a factor of 8 to 1 (after adjusting for population size). This in turn led to the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and helped to establish the Western Australian Deaths in Custody Watch Committee.