New Hampshire prosecutors dropped charges last week against a supposedly mentally ill inmate who spent his time awaiting trial eating broken teacups and shards of metal.

With his criminal trial behind him, Kevin Hall now has a civil suit pending against Cheshire County jail officials, accusing them of failing to provide him proper medical treatment for his self-inflicted injuries.

In his original 46-page handwritten complaint, the self-described schizophrenic documents his history of psychosis that allegedly began in childhood and led up to his most recent stint in jail, where he says his fragile emotional state drove him to eat shards of glass and cut himself with metal shanks made out of materials in his cell.

Hall also alleges that his jailers exhibited a deliberate indifference to his medical needs by failing to properly supervise or prevent him from harming himself in light of his mental condition.

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But a lawyer for the county says that although Hall's claims are unique, the former inmate may not be as mentally ill as he asserts.

"I think the facts, as they come out, will be different in relation to the mental issues he claims," attorney John Curran told Courttv.com.

The allegations stem from Hall's imprisonment at the Cheshire County House of Corrections, after he was arrested for making death threats against his father and sister in October 2004.

Kevin Hall's mug shot

In the complaint, Hall details a rambling and often digressive account of his three-month stay in the Cheshire County jail. During his incarceration, Hall says he sustained injuries that required $40,000 in medical treatment to remove materials from his intestines, after he was transferred in February 2005 to Hillsborough County jail, from where he filed his suit pro se.

Hall, who is seeking unspecified damages, claims that he first attempted to kill himself by eating metal wires and smashing a porcelain teacup and ingesting the shards.

His already fragile emotional state bottomed out, he claims, when his former jailers, including his "childhood friend," Capt. Robin Cook, allegedly locked him up in isolation after he attempted to commit suicide.

"I freaked out, thinking that they were now trying to kill me by keeping me hidden from everyone and letting the shards of glass and metal tear my guts apart," claims Hall, whose rap sheet for reckless conduct, assault and harassment goes back to 1982.

"The only thing I could think of that would make them get me to a hospital was if I was bleeding profusely from multiple wounds, not just simply puking some blood here and there," he wrote in the complaint.

Hall said he fashioned the rims of his glasses, a bed frame and the mirror in his cell into shanks, which he used to slice up his body.

But even as the guards acknowledged his injuries, Hall says, they refused to bring him to a doctor for more than a week.

Cut marks on Kevin Hall's leg

Moreover, after he underwent surgery to remove a piece of metal lodged in his intestines nearly a month later, Hall continued to cut himself with fragments of vents from his cell and swallow pieces of metal, according to his complaint.

Cook and Superintendent Richard Van Wickler acknowledged some of Hall's injuries, but denied that members of their staff exhibited the "deliberate indifference" necessary to prove Hall's claim.

Even so, they also claim a "qualified immunity" from any injuries by arguing that their actions were reasonable and within state and federal statute as agents of the law.

Hall was ultimately charged with criminal mischief for the damage he caused to the cells he was moved in and out of as he tore apart windows, mirrors, bedframes and even walls to create implements for his self-mutilation.

His felony mischief trial began last week, but was inexplicably halted when prosecutors decided to drop the charges. Cheshire County Attorney William Albrecht did not return calls from Courttv.com seeking further explanation.

After his release, Kevin Hall's father, Donald, says he last saw his son Wednesday, when he dropped him off at a bus station in Brattleboro, Vt., about 45 minutes from the trial venue in Keene, N.H., also where he was born and raised.

"He wanted to get out of town, and I think it was a good idea," Donald Hall told Courttv.com. "He gets into a lot of trouble around here."

Regardless of Kevin Hall's motives, Donald Hall maintains the treatment his son received was "inhuman."

"No matter what kind of person you are, they had no right to treat him like that. They should have been watching him closer," Hall said.

The father supported his son's claims of mental instability and said he had a documented past of self-mutilation and psychological treatment.

"I don't think a person can be in his right mind when he's eating glass," he said.