2003-01-24 - 9:38 a.m.
HERE COMES ATTICUS
Sometimes there is a client that rises up, grabs hold of your heart, and won�t let go. I have few Mama Bear instincts but I have a few and right now they are focused on a particular client. He�s not very handsome and he�s not very winsome. In fact, he�s quite ill and he�s quite helpless. But he doesn�t belong in the criminal justice system, at least not if we want to keep the word �justice� in its name. Trying to keep him out of it is sapping all my time, energy, and strength. Yet, paradoxically, it also is re-energizing me. As Kat would say, �Here comes Atticus.�
My client�s intellect has taken a double hit. He is mentally retarded and he is severely mentally ill with schizoaffective disorder. He has a family who loves him but he needs more than love. He needs extensive medication, which, unlike some of the mentally ill, he takes regularly and he needs a lot of structure. For the past fifteen years or so, since his middle teens, he has been in and out of the county mental health complex. He�s spent years on long-term care units, making him a rarity in this day and age. After a solid three years in a long-term care unit, the county moved him to a group home.
His mother had difficulty with his being in a group home. She worried about his inability to cope with less structure. She worried about his limitations in caring for himself. She worried that if he became agitated someone would send him to prison. She had seen the mentally ill that now wander in and out of the jails that we seem to have substituted for mental health facilities. �What if he fails?� she asked. The social workers reassured her. �The worst that will happen is that he will come back to county.�
The transition was rough. My client did not like his first group home. Just as small children do when facing life changes, he had to test the rules. He liked his new freedoms. He didn�t like his new freedoms. He discovered the possibilities of small rebellions. But my client, like some others who are mentally ill and mentally retarded, is capable of drinking so much water at one sitting that he could kill himself so water rules had to be enforced. And my client is diabetic so food rules mattered.
People who don�t like where they are living dream of more secure places. My client is not much of a dreamer because dreaming requires imagination and he is rather concrete. But remembering the safety and security of county took little imagination. My client wanted to go home�home to County.
One day, he went with some of his new friends at the group home to a fast food joint. He probably had soda pop. He probably got the sugared soda, instead of diet soda. No one is sure but he balked at checking his blood glucose level that night, most likely because he was afraid of being caught in having broken the rules. He became upset. He became very upset. He wanted to go home to County. He had had enough experience to know how you get to County. He called the police, told them he was ill, told them he was upset, and told them he needed to go to County.
The police, who were familiar with him from all of his emergency mental health detentions and the other times he had longed for County, responded. The nice police officer talked with him and calmed him down. The nice police officer decided that he was not agitated enough to meet the criteria for emergency detention. Then the nice police officer started to leave.
And then, apparently, my client remembered. A few months earlier, another resident had been taken to County after he became very agitated, made threats, and waived a knife around. So, my client seized a knife�a butter knife. He made some threats and, rather ineffectually, he waived the knife around. The nice police officer came back and someone, somewhere, made a decision. The wrong thing to do was to send my client to County�and that person probably was right although subsequent events got away.
Instead, my client was charged with disorderly conduct while armed and hauled off to the jail. Had events gone differently, he might have spent a short time at jail until someone decided to drop the charges and he would have gone back to the group home having learned that such things do not get you to County. But something went wrong. A court commissioner, who routinely imposes no-contact orders between defendants and victims, didn�t get the word about what was going on and he imposed a no-contact order. My client could not go back to the group home. He was not in enough distress to go to County. He sat in the jail.
He sat in the jail for months. His attorney, who didn�t seem to care much, had him sent out for a competency evaluation. The psychologist said he was competent but his analysis was decidedly unconvincing and kept referring to major limitations and the �narrow context of this case.� The attorney did not challenge it. After the client�s social worker badgered and badgered the attorney, the attorney had an evaluation about whether an insanity defense was possible. The doctor concluded that while my client was seriously ill and limited and those limitations played into the events, my client also knew that swinging a knife was wrong.
So, the attorney decided that my client should plead guilty in exchange for a sentence recommendation of a maximum sentence, the staying of that sentence, and imposition of probation. He took my limited client and met with him in the small bullpen behind the court. He met with him briefly in the noise and confusion. Then he rushed the guilty plea through. Everyone knew that my client had poor comprehension but no one asked very many questions----not the attorney, not the judge, and not the state. They didn�t want to know. They wanted the system to keep moving. Then they agreed that my client should come out of jail and go to a new group home.
But my client continued to sit in jail. Why? Because there was a problem with the order and his attorney decided he could not stick around for a hour or so until the judge could call the case again and make the change. When the case was called, the client�s social worker and the bailiff tried to straighten things out. The state and the judge agreed that on how it should be straightened out but could not make the change while my client was unrepresented. But his attorney was gone. His lawyer was off to have a good Christmas vacation.
And my client sat in jail. For almost four months he sat in jail. He sat in jail through Thanksgiving. He sat in jail through Christmas. And he still had not been sentenced.
At sentencing, there was a new judge, an older, reserve judge. He took one look at all the psychological reports. He took one look at my unkempt client who sometimes drools and always slurs his words and usually mutters. He confirmed that my client already was committed to the county mental health board and was under a guardianship. And he pronounced his verdict. �This case does not belong in criminal court,� he essentially said. �Case dismissed.�
For six months afterwards, the case stayed quiet. My client went to a new group home that he liked better. He did not make threats, he did not get into physical altercations, and he did not call the police in hopes they would take him to County. He told people that if you make threats you go to jail. He continued to take his medications. He still relied on the structure imposed by others to keep himself in check but he worked with those people. And everyone relaxed.
Then the state got an idea. Then the state got a political idea. Then the state got a zero-tolerance-type idea. The judge had no power to dismiss the case�and we must pursuit and appeal because a weapon was involved! So the state suddenly decided to commence an appeal. They sent the paperwork to my client�s old attorney, who claims he never got it. They filed a brief, which the attorney claims he never got. No one filed a brief for my client.
Eventually, the court of appeals issued an order demanding that a brief be filed and sent a copy to my office and, a little less than a year after the case was dismissed, I got involved.
At this point, my client can no longer accurately describe the events that landed him in jail. Too much time as passed and his intellectual deficits and his illness have distorted his memory. I�ve met with my client several times. Whatever he could have done originally, he cannot make the complex decisions that will come up if this case is resurrected. The notion that it�s over trumps everything in his mind. Even simple explanations go nowhere. Most important, he will never be able to associate any additional punishment with his actions of almost a year and a half ago. He�s been good. What good would punishment do now? He is monitored closely at the group home. What good would probation rules do?
Part of me, the driven part of me, says I must win this case. Justice demands nothing less. The trial judge was right. This case does not belong in the criminal justice system and it�s my job to keep it out of there. The pragmatic, cynical part says something else. It says that maybe I can�t win this case. If so, I must make sure that everyone knows the truth. I must make sure that everyone knows that this case has everything to do with �the system� and nothing to do with �justice.�
After all, that�s the best that even Atticus could do.
LAST YEAR: Driving Me
LAST FIVE ENTRIES:
Torpor
Twist and Twist Again
I Should Have Known
Making a List
Mellowing
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
