SEATTLE — While Marilyn Roberts’ mentally ill son sat in jail awaiting a competency evaluation, he became delusional, couldn’t concentrate, stopped eating and started hearing things.
“He was decompensating before my eyes,” said Roberts, the first witness in a federal trial that began Monday that seeks to resolve a class-action lawsuit brought for the hundreds of mentally ill defendants held in jails awaiting competency services.
Her son spent 97 days in a cell before he was finally sent to Western State Hospital for treatment, she said. Once there, “he started getting healthy, he turned around very quickly, he was chatty, he just improved rapidly,” Roberts said.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman has already ruled that the wait lists violate the defendants’ constitutional right to due process. The trial is a chance to find a remedy.
Lawyers with Disability Rights Washington and the American Civil Liberties Union are asking the court to step in and force the state to end the competency wait lists by any means necessary. Lawyers for the Attorney General’s Office argue the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, with the help of new laws passed by the 2015 Legislature, will be able to resolve the wait list problems without court intervention.
Under current state law, when a judge orders a competency evaluation for a defendant, the state has seven days to complete the process. If the person is found incompetent, the state has seven days to provide treatment to restore competency. But a lack of bed space and staff has caused these defendants to wait weeks or months for the services.
Anita Khandelwal, one of a half dozen lawyers represent mentally ill defendants in this case, said in her opening statement that the state has known about the long wait lists for years, but did nothing. Permanent injunctive relief is the only way to force the state to start honoring the defendants’ due process rights, she said.
“It’s been on notice since 2012 that they are failing to meet the statutory targets,” she said. The state has also failed to collect the data needed to understand the problem and fix it, she said.
“They claim they cannot complete evaluations in seven days, but Pierce County has done so,” Khandelwal said.
The second witness, Judy Snow, the mental health manager at the Pierce County Jail, described how they’ve been able to achieve what the state says can’t be done.
Concerned with the deterioration of the mentally ill defendants at her jail, Snow said she and a group of others formed evaluation panels made up of respected mental health professionals and lawyers for both sides. They’ve succeeded in providing in-jail competency evaluations for about 300 defendants. Only three cases took longer than seven days, she testified.
Like Marilyn Roberts’ son, many mentally ill defendants who are forced to spend 23 hours per day alone in a cell become more difficult to reach over time. Many are kept in seclusion because their mental illness causes them to behave in ways that could be dangerous to others, she said.
“The longer they’re in there, the less likely they are to want to get out of their cell,” she said. The jail has mental health professionals who check in on the defendants, “but they don’t establish a therapeutic relationship. They rotate through the cells. It’s more crisis intervention and stabilization, not ongoing treatment.”
Assistant Attorney General Sarah Jane Coats told the judge in her opening statement that a “rigid seven-day time limit” is not needed.
A bill recently passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee changes the seven-day limit for conducting competency evaluations and then providing treatment to 14 days, she said. The two-week limit can be expanded to 21 days if needed, she said, adding those limits are the national standard.
Lawmakers also approved a budget measure that will pay for 15 more forensic beds at Western State Hospital and pay for staff, she said. These efforts aim to fix the problem and a “highly restrictive injunction is not necessary.”
The trial is expected to run through the week.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
