Keith Simpson is surely no crazier than the justice system that keeps sending him back to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo.
Simpson, now 52, escaped from the facility for the fourth time Wednesday. He was arrested a day later in Denver.
Records show Simpson has a
decades-long history of charges that resulted in some criminal convictions and some findings of not guilty by reason of insanity – NGRI in the world of legal acronyms. However, because aggravated-robbery charges in Adams and Arapahoe counties ended with an NGRI plea and an open-ended commitment in 1989, Simpson hasn’t seen the inside of a penitentiary.
He does go to jail for a few days each time he escapes from the mental hospital. But he always comes back to Pueblo to wreak havoc.
In 2002, Denver Post reporter Kirk Mitchell examined Simpson’s hospital records with Simpson’s permission and discovered that Simpson had been punished for sexual assault, gambling and defrauding other patients.
He’s already back in Pueblo in a “more secure environment” but eventually will be able to again exploit the truly sick and the actually vulnerable.
There’s nothing hospital or criminal- justice officials can do about it.
Mental-health hospitals mean to rehabilitate, not punish.
Patients progress through treatment and are given greater and greater freedom in hopes of release. At the time of his escape, Simpson was free to leave the hospital grounds but not go to Denver.
Integrating folks into the community is a compassionate approach to mental illness. Those folks don’t often try to escape.
Only five escapes occurred in 2005, state officials said. Simpson’s was just the second of 2006.
He won’t pay. For those who con their way into the hospital to avoid the pen, it has become a way to be prison- proof. Mitchell found at least 11 prisoners, including Simpson, who seemed to fit that description.
Simpson was not even tried for escape in his three prior breakouts, which were more like walk-offs. He probably won’t go to the Department of Corrections for this one, either. But the Department of Human Services, which oversees the mental-health institute, has asked the Pueblo County district attorney to prosecute him, said department spokeswoman Liz McDonough.
If Simpson had left the state, his escape would have been a felony that could possibly have drawn enough of a sentence to get him into the DOC, McDonough maintained. However, in- state escape is only a misdemeanor. If he serves any time at all, Simpson will probably go the Pueblo County Jail. That might not happen because Denver police arrested Simpson without incident.
In any case, Simpson will end up back in the hospital, even though his doctors think he’s faking mental illness.
Simpson’s records include psychiatric evaluations that conclude bluntly that he is not insane. Doctors call him anti-social, which is not a psychotic condition but does make him dangerous on the street.
“I took Mr. Simpson off all anti-
psychotic medications well over a year ago, and there has been absolutely no indication of recurrent psychosis,” a psychiatrist wrote in 1997. “I note in recent mental-status examinations, his diagnosis has been ‘paranoid schizophrenia by history.’ I am no longer even willing to go along with this diagnosis and would instead tend to believe that his psychotic symptoms have always been fabricated.”
Regardless of what Simpson’s doctors believe, they are stuck with him. The rest of us are stuck with what he might do the next time he escapes. One time, he broke a woman’s toe while carjacking her automobile. He got sentenced for that but served the time in the hospital.
Simpson returned to the Colorado Mental Health Institute on Friday from the Denver City Jail.
How long he’ll be there is anybody’s guess.
“The only way to remedy this would be legislatively,” said McDonough.
It might be time.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or
