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ACLU, Law Firm Sue Pennsylvania Over Mentally Ill Defendants in Jails

Pennsylvania is violating the rights of mentally ill defendants, allowing them to languish in jail often for hundreds of days for petty crimes, before determining whether they can be rehabilitated enough to stand trial or committing them to a treatment setting, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, D.C., filed the case on behalf of 11 defendants, most of whom have no family or friends, are poor and unable to challenge their imprisonment.

The lawsuit seeks class-action certification to represent hundreds of defendants with severe mental illness in Pennsylvania's jails, often kept in solitary confinement for months or more, the lawyers say, and exacerbating their illnesses.

"Our clients in this case are the forgotten among the forgotten," said Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the ACLU's Pennsylvania chapter.

The suit echoes cases brought in Utah, Washington and California, but says the wait times in Pennsylvania are the longest in the country. The Pennsylvania wait times are longer than some defendants would spend in jail if convicted and, as such, violate their rights under the Constitution's due process clause and the Americans With Disabilities Act, the suit says.

The lawsuit seeks a court order forcing Pennsylvania to move mentally ill defendants to a state hospital within seven days of a judge's determination that they are incompetent to stand trial. It also asks the court to order the state to secure an appropriate treatment setting for mentally ill defendants within 30 days once a hospital determines they are unlikely to be rehabilitated enough to stand trial.

The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services has been working hard for months to improve services at the hospitals and assemble a plan to address it, an agency spokeswoman said Thursday.

The department's secretary, Ted Dallas, put the issue at the top of his priority list when he took the post in January, spokeswoman Kait Gillis said.

Waiting times to get into a state hospital apparently started mounting in 2012 and the state knew about it, said David Gersh of Arnold & Porter.

"In the face of a mountain of evidence that they had a systemic problem, the commonwealth chose to do nothing, or whatever they did do didn't solve the problem, because it's gotten worse," Gersh said.

Federal courts have ruled that delays of more than seven days from the court's commitment order to hospitalization for treatment are unconstitutional, the lawsuit said, but defendants on the list to be transferred to a state hospital in eastern Pennsylvania can expect to wait about 400 days after a judge rules they are too mentally ill to stand trial.

The lead plaintiff in the case, referred to only as J.H., is a homeless man in his late 50s who suffers from schizophrenia and was charged with retail theft for stealing three Peppermint Pattie candies, the suit says. He has spent nearly a year in a Philadelphia jail awaiting an opening at a state hospital. In the meantime, his mental state has deteriorated and he now gets "agitated, hostile and unable or unwilling to engage in conversation," the lawsuit said.

One woman, named as Jane Doe, was found incompetent to stand trial on assault charges and has waited 16 months to be transferred to a state hospital, the suit says. Five of the plaintiffs have languished in state hospital forensic units, some times for years after they were deemed unable to stand trial, but have not had their charges dropped or been moved to a less restrictive treatment setting, the lawsuit said.

According to the lawsuit, Pennsylvania has 237 beds in two state hospitals - Norristown in suburban Philadelphia and Torrance about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh - that are available for defendants who were judged too mentally ill to stand trial, although the beds are often used for other purposes.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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