Exam surge snarls system
Evaluations double in the past decade for criminal defendants.
Every year judges order hundreds of Colorado defendants to undergo exams to determine whether they are mentally competent to stand trial.
The use of such evaluations is soaring, stalling even routine cases for months, straining judicial budgets and highlighting the continued use of jails and prisons as substitutes for mental health treatment.
The number of mental-competency evaluations of criminal defendants has more than doubled in the past decade, even though criminal charges being filed have dropped by 19 percent.
Drifting in the middle of the price tags and debates, criminal defendants— many of whom face charges for nonviolent offenses— must navigate their way through the widening nexus of mental health and criminal justice.
“The mentally ill are constantly falling through the cracks of the mental health system and continually coming into contact with the criminal justice system,” said Dr. Neil Gowensmith, who teaches at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology. “These are not always the dangerous, violently mentally ill folks. These are often people who are having a hard time navigating life.”
Some defense attorneys worry that the increasingly high demand for the reports is causing “fly-by evaluations.” Independent experts, however, say the quality of competency evaluations in Colorado is above grade, and the increase mirrors national trends and represents the lack of preventive treatment for the mentally ill.
Ajudge, defense attorney or prosecutormay request a competency evaluation if the defendant exhibits signs of mental illness. If a judge orders an exam, all proceedings stop and a doctor will try to determine if the defendant is mentally competent to understand court proceedings and the charges against them.
If a defendant is found incompetent, they may require hospitalization, medication or treatment until they can understand the charges and process, ensuring a fair trial. Then, if the defendant is restored to a stable mental state, the case will resume.
Mental “snapshot”
More complicated are cases inwhich doctorsmust decide if defendantswerementally capable of understanding the crime they committed. That’s the center issue with James Holmes, who killed 12 people inside an Aurora movie theater. If doctors find Holmes insane — and a jury agrees — he could face years of treatment at a state hospital, but not prison.
But unlike a sanity evaluation, which works retrospectively to determine if someone was sane at the time of the crime, competency evaluations are designed to capture a “snapshot” of someone’s current mental state. The fluid nature of someone’s mental health can be difficult to capture in a report, often re-