A Denver judge has threatened to fine or imprison the head of the Colorado Mental Health Institute unless the Pueblo hospital finds room to treat mentally ill inmates now languishing in jail cells.
It’s the latest clash between the courts and state government over funding for state treatment of mentally ill people accused of crimes. In the meantime, scores of inmates whom judges have ordered into state care wait, untreated, behind bars.
Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff has appointed special prosecutors to determine whether Steve Schoenmakers, head of the state’s hospital for the mentally ill, is in contempt of a court order to take an alleged bicycle thief for treatment.
“This is out of control,” said Iris Eytan, whom Egelhoff has named a special prosecutor in the case.
“The number of these individuals grows every day,” Eytan said. “You have people who are mentally ill locked up in jail not getting any treatment,” including necessary medication.
The state mental hospital in Pueblo says it doesn’t have room for dozens of Colorado defendants whom psychiatrists have found incompetent to stand trial. As a result, those inmates are waiting in jails.
Beverly Fulton, a first assistant Colorado attorney general, said that in early October, 77 Colorado defendants judged incompetent for trial were waiting for admission to the state mental hospital, and many of them had been in jail for months.
The situation came to a head in Denver when the hospital refused to accept alleged bicycle thief Eugene Zuniga after Judge Egelhoff ordered it to do so on June 13.
Egelhoff said a psychiatrist had determined that Zuniga, 36, was incompetent to stand trial. He wanted the hospital to restore him to competency and report back on Zuniga’s progress by Aug. 24.
Eytan said Zuniga remained in a small Denver cell for four months without medication and was allowed out of the cell for one hour every day. “It’s incredible,” she said.
On Sept. 7, Zuniga still hadn’t been moved to the hospital. The same day, Egelhoff ordered Schoenmakers to appear in court to show why he shouldn’t be held in contempt. He appointed Eytan and another lawyer, Marcus Lock, as special prosecutors against Schoenmakers.
On Sept. 22, because of Egelhoff’s threatened action against Schoenmakers, Zuniga was admitted to the state hospital’s maximum-security unit – ahead of other people who had been waiting longer, Fulton said in court documents.
Schoenmakers, interviewed Tuesday, said the number of people referred for competency evaluations has nearly doubled from 418 in 2001 to 815 this year, with a similar jump in the number deemed incompetent for trial, from 86 in 2001 to 158 this year.
“The volume simply exceeds our capacity to treat people without a waiting list,” he said. “And right now that waiting list is up to about 80 people out in the jails, and it is creating a significant problem.”
He added that “most of these cases are coming in with violent charges ranging from homicide to kidnapping to sexual assault.”
At the same time, said Fulton, who is defending Schoenmakers, a federal court settlement that addressed the hospital’s overcrowding and understaffing mandated a certain staff-to-patient ratio at the hospital.
Under the settlement, said Schoenmakers, “we were required to reduce our capacity in medium and maximum security by a total of 16 beds.” The 16 beds came out of a total of 148 beds.
Fulton said many mental- health advocates in Colorado blame the “extraordinary rise” in the number of people in jail seeking admission to the state mental hospital on cuts in funding to the community health centers for indigent care.
The problem is national. The New York Times reported last month that the number of beds in state psychiatric hospitals around the nation had dropped to 40,000 from 69,000 in 1995, and that community treatment programs had not made up the loss.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, found that nationally, 64 percent of inmates held in county jails reported mental health problems.
Fulton argues that before Schoen makers can be found in contempt, Egelhoff must find he could have complied with the order. That would have been impossible, she said, because of the lengthy waiting list of other inmates.
Zuniga, the defendant at the core of the issue, is described in court records as either transient or homeless. He has worked as a laborer, parking attendant, roofer, janitor and usher.
His alleged victim, Dena Pastorini, had her bicycle stolen from her parking space on Feb. 12. Pastorini said that the theft disturbed her, but it was a letter from Zuniga after his arrest that really upset her and convinced her he needs mental-health treatment. She declined to go into its contents.
Fulton said Schoenmakers has done a lot to address the problem. She said he has hired a psychologist to evaluate people for competency in Denver-area jails, and a psychologist to evaluate people brought to the state hospital for competency.
Schoenmakers said the hospital also is trying to get funding to reopen some beds, and hopes to get other mental-health-care providers to take some patients.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
