State sued over mentally ill defendants in jails

HARRISBURG>> Pennsylvania is violating the rights of mentally ill defendants, allowing them to languish in jail often for hundreds of days for petty crimes, before determining whether they can be rehabilitated enough to stand trial or committing them to a treatment setting, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, D.C., filed the case on behalf of 11 defendants, most of whom have no family or friends, are poor and unable to challenge their imprisonment.

The lawsuit seeks class- action certification to represent hundreds of defendants with severe mental illness in Pennsylvania’s jails, often kept in solitary confinement for months or more, the lawyers say, and exacerbating their illnesses.

“Our clients in this case are the forgotten among the forgotten,” said Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the ACLU’s Pennsylvania chapter.

The suit echoes cases brought in Utah, Washington and California, but says the wait times in Pennsylvania are the longest in the country. The Pennsylvania wait times are longer than some defendants would spend in jail if convicted and, as such, violate their rights under the Constitution’s due process clause and the Ameri- cans With Disabilities Act, the suit says.

The lawsuit seeks a court order forcing Pennsylvania to move mentally ill defendants to a state hospital within seven days of a judge’s determination that they are incompetent to stand trial. It also asks the court to order the state to secure an appropriate treatment setting for mentally ill defendants within 30 days once a hospital determines they are unlikely to be rehabilitated enough to stand trial.

The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services has been working hard for months to improve services at the hospitals and assemble a plan to address it, an agency spokeswoman said Thursday.