Full mental hospitals leave inmates waiting

January 29, 2012 10:18 AM

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BY JON VANDERLAAN

Rickey Lavell Taylor has been sitting in the Ector County Detention Center for nearly three months awaiting psychological treatment.

Taylor, who is accused in the 2009 shooting death of Johnny Lee Mackey, was ordered to go to the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon on Nov. 1 after he was found to be incompetent to stand trial.

But he remained in the jail because all 343 maximum-security in the Vernon hospital were full, with a waiting list for future beds.

District Attorney Bobby Bland said the longest he remembers an inmate waiting to be admitted from Ector County to a state hospital was one month.

“A three-month wait to be admitted into the state hospital certainly hampers our ability to go forward in this case,” he said.

However, Sheriff Mark Donaldson said several inmates being transferred to Vernon have had to wait from two to four months before being transported, but those transported to other state hospitals only take between one and two months, which he said is still too long.

“If they’re going to be evaluated and they ordered for that to happen then that’s where they need to go and need to be,” he said. “Not sitting in jail.”

Competency measures the defendant’s ability to understand the charges against him or her and be able to help their defense attorney in the case, Bland said, and the case cannot be resolved until the defendant is found competent.

Defense attorney Matt Thomas said he didn’t even know Taylor was still waiting to be sent to the hospital, but said it’s something he needs to look into.

“If they don’t ship him out in a reasonable time, it’s something we might need to take up with the judge and see if he’s got any suggestions to light the fire under Vernon’s tail,” he said.

Although there are some practicalities that he can’t get around in the state, Thomas said, this process should not take as long as it has.

And 419th District Judge Orlinda Naranjo agrees.

Naranjo issued a judgment Monday in a lawsuit brought by Disability Rights Texas against the Texas Department of State Health Services in which Disability Rights Texas alleged that the department took too long to admit inmates and DSHS was violating those inmates’ due process rights.

“The court rules that keeping incompetent pretrial defendants confined in county jail for unreasonable periods of time prior to being admitted to a state mental health facility or residential health facility to receive treatment violates the incompetent detainees’ due process rights as guaranteed by the Texas Constitution,” according to the ruling.

The court found that defendants waited in jail for an average of six months until they were admitted for treatment, although the DSHS disagrees with this number.

Spokeswoman Carrie Williams said patients who require more extensive treatment must wait longer while preparations are made, thus increasing the average wait for patients to be admitted, which is about two-and-a-half months.

Taylor’s case is not out of the ordinary, she said.

Regardless, the 419th District Court ordered that the hospitals take any inmate ordered to psychological treatment within 21 days of the order.

“Given the fact that the Texas Legislature has mandated a maximum amount of time for treatment of 120 days for misdemeanor offenses and 180 days for felony offenses, the fact that incompetent detainees are confined in county jail for an average of 180 days prior to beginning treatment is unreasonable,” according to the ruling.

Williams said the hospitals were working on figuring out how to adapt to the ruling, and will be prepared by the time a final order is made for the hospitals to begin the practice.

“What it boils down to is a capacity issue,” she said. “We have long been working on this issue. We’ve long been trying to figure out ways to make those wait times shorter. That’s something we are always working toward.”

She said the mandate affects the entire state, but Bland said the ruling doesn’t have a bearing on pending Ector County cases.

“It’s recognizing, obviously, a problem but it does not have a direct correlation to our criminal cases at this time,” he said.

STATE HOSPITAL BEDS