Judge: Mentally incompetent state inmates being kept in jail too long
By Andrea Ball
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Texas routinely violates the constitutional rights of mentally incompetent prisoners by forcing them to stay in jail for up to six months before moving them to psychiatric hospitals, a Travis County judge ruled this week.
State District Judge Orlinda Naranjo ruled that the Department of State Health Services must start moving "forensic commitments" — people accused of crimes who have been ruled incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness — to state psychiatric hospitals within 21 days of receiving a judge's order. Over the past two years , the average prisoner spent six months in jail waiting for a hospital bed, the ruling states.
"Keeping incompetent pretrial criminal defendants confined in county jail for unreasonable periods of time violates the incompetent detainees' due process rights as guaranteed by the Texas Constitution," Naranjo wrote.
A final order that would specifically lay out how the health department should proceed has not been issued, said Tom Kelley , spokesman for the attorney general's office. That agency has not decided whether it will appeal the case. Right now, there is no timetable for when the changes might be instituted.
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