Special prosecutors have agreed to let a mediator try to resolve a legal dispute over state treatment of 82 criminal defendants languishing in local jails who need mental- health evaluations or treatment.
But the two prosecutors, Iris Eytan and Marcus Lock, told a Denver judge Thursday that if the situation isn’t resolved within two months, they will seek fines against the state.
“We mean business, and we want to get the people out of jail” and into mental- health treatment, Eytan told Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff. “The constitutional rights of all these individuals are being violated.”
Egelhoff scheduled a hearing for Feb. 26.
Officials say the state’s mental-health hospital in Pueblo lacks the capacity to take many new cases of inmates deemed mentally incompetent for trial, as ordered by judges. The hospital also is under a court agreement to maintain a minimum staff-to-patient ratio.
In the crosshairs of the prosecutors, who were appointed by Egelhoff, are Marva Livingston Hammons, executive director of the Colorado Department of Human Services, and Steve Schoenmakers, the hospital’s superintendent. The prosecutors have asked that Egelhoff hold Hammons and Schoenmakers in contempt.
The prosecutors said that Dan Hale, a former Boulder district judge, has agreed to mediate the dispute. Also involved in the process will be representatives of the attorney general’s office, mental-health professionals and the prosecutors.
Egelhoff appointed Eytan and Lock after the state hospital ignored his order to treat alleged bicycle thief Eugene Zuniga, who was found incompetent to stand trial.
Late last week, Egelhoff issued a second show-cause order against Schoenmakers when the hospital refused to to take Karl Iviacz Sims, 48. Sims pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine but was later found incompetent. On Oct. 11, Egelhoff ordered the hospital to treat Sims, which it didn’t do.
The state legislature’s Joint Budget Committee will be asked today to approve a $3.5 million emergency request from Hammons that will allow the hospital’s waiting list to be eliminated within a year.
Liz McDonough, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, said Hammons and other state officials will be at the JBC meeting.
“(Hammons) is going to give them information concerning the steps we’ve taken and continue to take … to resolve this situation as quickly and as responsibly as we can.”
Also Thursday, the Colorado Behavioral Health Care Council, an umbrella group of community mental-health treatment centers, proposed a possible solution to the crisis, one the group says will cost a fraction of what the state is requesting to address the problem.
The plan calls for Colorado’s 17 community mental- health centers to help provide competency evaluations and also to provide treatment in jails for inmates.
That treatment could serve as a bridge until there is room for the inmates in the state hospital. Or, for those not so severely ill, it could even replace the more expensive in-patient care, said George DelGrosso, the council’s president.
