#MomsAgainstTorture: help pass AB 1630 to protect vulnerable Californians
In 2018, Gina’s son Jeremy sat in jail for nine months unmedicated before he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial in San Diego for a parole violation. He spent an additional three months in jail without medication while awaiting a bed at a state hospital.
Jeremy, who has schizophrenia, thought he was being attacked when he was finally transferred to the state hospital in San Bernardino and a group of hospital employees attempted to medicate him by force. One of the employees was injured in the predictable chaos that ensued, and Jeremy was charged with causing the injury.
Four days after his arrival at the state hospital for restoration treatment, Jeremy was taken back to jail. Nine days after that, despite the fact that Jeremy was never restored to competence, he was allowed to plead guilty at his very first court appearance in San Bernardino. After Jeremy started a new two-year prison sentence, his charges in San Diego were dropped.
What happened to the original judgment of incompetency? It’s like it never existed. Jeremy arrived at Patton after nearly a year in jail without medication. If he was incompetent to stand trial in San Diego, he was incompetent to stand trial in San Bernardino.
“As Jeremy’s mother, it was devastating to see my son’s rights be violated in a court of law, and for the consequences to be additional years in prison, where his condition could only be exacerbated.”
#MomsAgainstTorture is a movement led by Gina and other mothers of vulnerable Californians who were incarcerated even though they were never restored to competence after being deemed incompetent to stand trial.
Like Jeremy, nearly half of defendants found incompetent to stand trial are unsheltered and not receiving mental health services in the six months prior to their arrest, and are arrested for reasons relating to their homelessness or untreated psychosis. These same individuals cannot participate in their own defense at trial, and often experience more severe traumas in jails and prisons because they don’t fully understand what’s happening to them or what’s going on around them.
California law currently states that someone who is mentally incompetent cannot be prosecuted, convicted, or sentenced. Nonetheless, thousands of vulnerable Californians who desperately need medical care are receiving torture instead of treatment because California’s courts don't have the safeguards needed to adequately protect people who are mentally incompetent to stand trial.
Incarcerating these individuals violates their rights to adequate medical care and due process, and it doesn’t make the problem go away - it only makes things worse because it’s torture instead of treatment for our most vulnerable and it betrays one of the bedrock principles of our justice system.
We are building a statewide movement to protect the right to due process for all people deemed mentally incompetent by a California court. They should not be railroaded into new charges without ever being restored. People with severe mental illness are human beings. They deserve the same rights as anyone else, including the right to due process and adequate treatment.
Join the #MomsAgainstTorture movement and call on California lawmakers to pass AB 1630, the Vulnerable Defendant’s Right to a Fair Trial Act.