John Mahoney shot and killed his father. He was subsequently indicted for first-degree murder, weapons offenses and hindering apprehension, and the case proceeded to trial. His defense was battered child syndrome – his actions toward his father were motivated by the latter’s physical and emotional abuse. The jury convicted him…
Cleveland, Ohio has become the latest city to enter into a consent decree with the United States Justice Department (“DOJ”) concerning the conduct of its police force. Other cities that have previously entered into similar agreements include New Orleans, Seattle and Detroit. The consent decree stemmed from a DOJ investigation…
The Cook County Jail in Chicago is one of the largest county jails in the United States, holding up to 9,000 inmates on any given day. It is estimated that approximately one third of these inmates are mentally ill. Indeed, Cook County officials have stated that the jail is, in…
Human Rights Watch (“HRW”) recently issued a new Report finding that mentally ill inmates in US prisons are frequently mistreated, neglected and abused. The Report also contains a lot of information concerning the role of prisons in the mental health system in this country. First, according to the HRW Report,…
New York’s Rikers Island is the second largest jail in the United States, housing between 11,000 and 12,500 inmates at a given time. It is also one of the most violent jails in the country. For many years, experts have acknowledged that placement in solitary confinement can negatively impact an…
A large part of my firm’s criminal practice focuses upon representing criminal defendants with substance abuse issues. These defendants are typically addicted to cocaine or heroin. Many of these clients are simultaneously addicted to numerous substances (typically referred to as poly-substances abusers). These clients present special challenges that must be…
National Public Radio recently ran stories concerning the off-label use of psychotropic medications to sedate nursing home residents to make them more pliable and easier for staff to control. Unfortunately, this abuse does not occur only in nursing homes. It happens in jails and prisons in the United States and…
Scott Panetti may be dead by the time you read this. As of this moment, Texas is scheduled to execute him tonight, and his lawyers are probably doing handstands trying to get the US Supreme Court to review his case. In 1992, Panetti, who has (had?) a long history of…
In Atkins v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court held that the federal Constitution barred the execution of defendants with intellectual disabilities. Based upon Atkins, Freddie Lee Hall moved before the Florida courts for an order vacating his capital sentence because he had an IQ test score of 71. By and…
During the same week in early April, 2014, the New York Times published two seemingly unrelated stories highlighting the increasing contacts that law enforcement personnel have with mentally ill individuals, and the problems that result from these encounters. The fact that one of the Nation’s largest newspapers ran both of…