Three advocacy groups have sued the Missouri Department of Mental Health over long delays in its competency testing process for criminal defendants.
ArchCity Defenders, the ACLU of Missouri and the MacArthur Justice Center filed the federal lawsuit Monday on behalf of six individuals held in jails across the state. They are seeking permission from a judge to expand the suit to include all defendants who are awaiting a court-ordered competency exam or who have been found incompetent but have not yet received treatment.
"Our clients and hundreds like them are left helpless, caged, and abandoned by DMH," MacArthur Justice Director Amy Malinowski said in a statement. "This betrayal of Missourians must end now."
State law allows a judge or attorneys on either side of a criminal case to ask for an examination to determine if defendants understand the case against them and can assist in their own defense. Under state law, those exams must take place within 60 days, but the lawsuit claims it's taking up to six months.
An individual who is found incompetent is sent to a state psychiatric hospital in order to receive treatment for the mental illness or disability that led to their being declared incompetent.
On average, the suit said, individuals found incompetent wait 14 months for treatment. One of the defendants named in the suit has waited nearly 16 months for a bed to open up, it said.
"People get sicker and sicker," said Maureen Hanlon, managing attorney for civil rights litigation at ArchCity Defenders. "And the jail staff, the jail employees and the other people in the jail, it becomes much less safe and much scarier for them there."
Jail administrators and corrections officers, she added, are the ones who are the most angry about the failure of the state to do its job.
Some individuals have waited so long for treatment, Hanlon said, they may never be found competent again. Others have died.
The suit accuses the state of violating the constitutional rights of the groups of inmates, as well as two federal laws that prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities. It asks a judge to "order defendants to develop a remedial plan to reduce wait times for competency assessments and restoration treatment to within constitutional limits."
The state does not comment on pending litigation.
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