SEATTLE — Washington state, under scrutiny for holding mentally ill people in jails instead of providing timely competency evaluations and treatment, is fighting efforts to have a federal judge rule quickly in favor of the defendants.
The state already faces tens of thousands of dollars in fines levied by state judges for failing to follow treatment orders.
Assistant Attorney General John McIlhenny told the judge that in some cases, the long wait times for some defendants are “excessive and indefensible.” But that’s not true for everyone, he said. Since some of the waits are shot, the court should limit its order “rather than seeking to establish bright-line rules to govern every case or possible wait time,” McIlhenny told U.S. District Chief Judge Marsha Pechman in his filing last week.
Lawyers for Disability Rights Washington and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in August claiming some mentally ill defendants are forced to stay in jails for weeks or months while they wait to be moved to one of the state’s two psychiatric hospitals for a competency evaluation.
Defense attorneys in Snohomish County routinely have been asking for sanctions against the state hospital for failing to quickly admit mentally ill people who aren’t competent.
Judges here have declined to hold the state in contempt and level any fines. In some cases, they agreed that some inmates’ rights were being violated because of the long delays. Judges here have opted to release the inmates to the streets to wait for open beds at Western State Hospital.
The lawsuit originated with Snohomish County public defenders representing a mentally ill woman accused of slapping an Everett police officer. She had been waiting weeks for a bed a the state hospital.
As is the case with most mentally ill inmates at the county jail, the woman was housed in solitary confinement.
Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary repeatedly has said that the jail isn’t set up to provide adequate treatment for severely mentally ill offenders. That population takes considerable resources.
Prosecutors eventually dismissed the assault charge against the woman.
If found incompetent, they wait again to have their competency restored. State law says the process should happen within seven days but a lack of bed space and staff has resulted in long waitlists. The lawsuit claims this violates their constitutional right to due process. Pechman has made the case a class action.
She ordered a March trial, but the advocacy groups on Nov. 6 filed a motion for summary judgment and the state responded Dec. 1. Lawyers for the plaintiffs responded to the state on Friday, saying any waiting period longer than seven days is unacceptable.
An Associated Press review found that some state judges who ordered the competency evaluations filed dozens of contempt orders this year against the state when the orders were not followed. The judges also have ordered sanctions that have topped $200,000.
McIlhenny told the court the situation is not as bad as the rights’ groups have made it out to be and the situation is getting better each day.
He said the department has struggled with a lack of funding, increases in demands for service and staffing challenges, but a closer look at the different cases reveals that the process is only failing a few. The problem must be broken down to what’s happening at the two psychiatric facilities — Western and Eastern state hospitals — and be broken down further by looking at who’s waiting for evaluations, who needs competency restoration and whether they were charged with misdemeanors or felonies, he said.
The competency evaluation wait times for people charged with misdemeanors at Western State Hospital is an average of 15 days, while there’s no wait for these cases at Eastern State Hospital, he said. But the felony evaluations in the west wait 27 days, but wait 47 days in the east, he said. Felony restoration cases can wait an average of 89 days for a spot in Western State Hospital but wait only five days for space in the eastern hospital, he said.
“This court should grant only a narrow and constrained partial summary judgment that addresses the most extreme wait times,” he said.
Advocacy group lawyers urged the judge to end the warehousing of these mentally ill defendants and issue a summary judgment so they can begin to find solutions.
Herald writer Diana Hefley contributed to this report.
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