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Few bills proposed at Lege to remedy statewide crisis in competency restoration

Steven Kreytak at the Austin Statesman has an excellent article on the little-discussed topic of competency restoration for mentally ill defendants, focusing on an extreme Austin case where a murder defendant, James McMeans, has spent 11.5 years in and out of state hospitals and jails, with the courts and the medical system unable to restore him to "competency," whatever that would mean for a previously homeless schizophrenic who thinks stabbing people is the only way to tell if they're androids. But the story also explored data regarding the more typical, workaday competency restoration cases that are clogging state mental hospitals and turning local jails into de facto mental asylums.Last year, 120 people from Travis County were among the 1,151 defendants from across Texas ultimately committed to the state hospitals with the goal of having their competency restored, said Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 15, 2011 (boomark / email).