Five months in jail with no conviction?
A got a call from a Laytonville woman named Randy who is in her 60s and is
the mother of seven daughters, one of whom, her 28-year-old daughter (I'll call her Mary),
is in the county jail.
Randy admits to being the one who called the police last spring when she and
Mary got into an argument over Mary’s boyfriend and Mary got a little
physical with her. Now, however, Randy is upset and believes her daughter is
being mistreated and will be permanently damaged by her experience in the jail.
Randy says her daughter definitely has anger management issues and is an
alcoholic, although she had been in some kind of rehab in Lake County and
was clean for some time.
Now, Randy, says, Mary has been in the county jail since April 23 with no
conviction and no sentence. Randy says the court says she is incompetent to
stand trial. Randy says Mary is in lock down now and
she, her mother, has been barred from visiting her. She says the county
social worker and mental health workers are also barred from seeing Mary.
She says that since she hasn’t been sentenced, Mary is ineligible for
treatment programs. Randy also says she is being force fed Risperdal, a drug
for schizophrenics with side effects that include anxiety, insomnia and
weight gain (all things you really need while in lockup).
Mary sounds like she definitely has substance abuse and anger problems,
may also have a rap sheet and undoubtedly needs help. But does she deserve
to be in lockdown, in jail, with no visitors and no one treating her for
anything other than with serious psychotropic drugs?
I am sure there are people out there who know more about this case and I am
going to try to find out something more about it. And I don't doubt that jail staff are doing what they believe is right in Mary's case. Clearly her mother is going to provide mostly what she believes is in Mary's defense. However, just on the
surface it seems like this may be a good case to look at when we look at the
very critical problem of having mentally ill people in our jails. This
28-year-old woman has apparently been found incompetent to stand trial and
yet she is being treated like a prisoner convicted of a very serious crime.
That just doesn’t sound right to me.