SEATTLE— Lawyers for mentally ill defendants who are forced to wait in jail cells for months for competency evaluations and treatment have asked a federal judge to issue a ruling that says Washington’s health services agency is violating the inmates’ constitutional rights.
A federal lawsuit filed by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Disability Rights Washington is scheduled to go to trial on March 16. But late Thursday, the lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment.
The motion argued that mentally ill defendants, many arrested on misdemeanor charges, are held in jails for up to 60 days awaiting competency evaluations. If found incompetent, they’re held in jails again waiting to go to the hospital to have their competency restored so they can help with their defense. The motion said this is happening because the state’s two psychiatric hospitals are overcrowded.
The lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman to rule that withholding services violates the defendants’ due-process rights. Last week, Pechman granted the lawyers’ request to certify the case as a class-action, which means it will apply to all mentally ill defendants in the state who are on the wait lists.
David Carlson, a lawyer with the disability rights group, said they sought the summary judgment to narrow the issues they’ll deal with at the March trial.
“We are asking to court to look at the uncontested facts and apply the law,” he said. “We believe that given that everyone agrees there are significant delays in people receiving evaluation and restoration services from the two state psychiatric hospitals, the court can rule on whether the law is being violated.”
If the judge rules that the Department of Social and Health Services is violating the law by not providing the services, “the trial would focus on what remedies can be crafted to deliver timely evaluation and restoration services to the class members currently sitting in jails across the state,” Carlson said.
Alison Dempsey-Hall, spokeswoman for the Washington Attorney General’s office, said the office will respond to the motion for summary judgment by Dec. 1, “as required by the federal court rules.”
According to the lawsuit, whenever there is doubt about whether a defendant is competent to stand trial, a judge will order a competency evaluation and the state has seven days to get it done. The state has another seven days to treat the defendant to restore competency. But limited space in western and eastern state hospitals has meant that the inmates stay on wait lists in cells without getting any treatment.
An Associated Press investigation recently found that some of the judges who issued the orders for evaluations are holding the state in contempt for failing to follow their orders and have issued fines that have topped $100,000. Some fines of up to $500 for each day the inmate remains in jail continue to accrue.
One document filed in the lawsuit details the hundreds of defendants impacted by the waitlists. It said that Eastern State Hospital reported on Oct. 24 that 60 people were in jails waiting for competency evaluations or treatment: 44 had waited for more than a week; 19 had waited form more than 35 days; and three waited for more than 56 days. Western State Hospital reported that 144 people were in jails waiting to get into the hospital.
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