Vagina Ghosts and The Challenge of Defending The Mentally Ill
The system fails the mentally ill over and over again.
Our client was charged with assault after she bit a security guard.
She bit the security guard when she tried to leave the ER and he restrained her.
She was at the ER because she had vaginal pain.
She told paramedics she had vaginal pain because of ghosts.
Theresa (not her real name, obviously) has been mentally ill her entire life. She somehow managed to graduate from high school, but has never held a meaningful job and receives Social Security Disability.
Her homelife was chaotic, she has no real relationship with her mother or father, and she’s spent considerful time on the streets. The assault charge is just one in a long line of trespass, obstruction, domestic violence, and various drug charges.
In fact, she’s our client in another court for three counts of theft.
She believes she has a license that allows her to steal things.
I’ve been plagued lately by the question, “What do you do with people like this?”
What you don’t do is put them in jail, which is almost where Theresa ended up a few days ago because the Prosecuting Attorney on duty that day knows nothing about competency hearings and the Judge is a bureaucratic martinet who has basically destroyed our local municipal court.
Theresa is obviously incompetent to stand trial, is already under a guardianship, and the competency hearing was just a formality. The charges against her in this court (theft) will be dimsissed.
But because the State wouldn’t waive its right to file an affidavit in the probate court alleging that the defendant is a mentally ill person subject to court order (which everybody knows she is, because she’s already subject to a guardianship through the probate court), “the trial court may detain the defendant for ten days pending a hearing in the probate court.” O.R.C. Sec. 2945.38(I).
Mayhem ensues.
Now, I understand the concern. You can’t allow people to run around stealing things because they think they’re allowed to.
But the wheels were already turning in probate court to change her care plan such that she will never be allowed to leave her group home alone. That solves the problem.
But what did the Judge decide to do? He put Theresa on a GPS monitor because the State wouldn’t waive its right to file an affidavit it knew nothing about.
Now, this is on a Friday at around 3:00 p.m. Theresa’s actual Guardian was on vacation and she had sent a young underling to appear in Court who, God love him, had no idea what he was doing.
His voice cracked when he called me looking for my boss. “The GPS place won’t answer the phone.”
This is normal. I called my boss, who then proceeded to give me a detailed blow-by-blow of the entire hearing while poor what’s-his-name was having a kitten three blocks away while he tried to keep a paranoid schizophrenic from heading to the nearest Walmart with her imaginary license to steal.
I finally cut him off and said, "You gotta call Josh, he’s freaking out.”
The GPS place eventually answered the phone and Theresa was hooked up for no obvious reason at the taxpayers’ expense. Yay!
If you’re emotionally invested in Theresa’s story, her assault case will be dismissed as well, again after racking up fees and costs that will come from the pockets of Ohio taxpayers. She lives in a group home called Happy Days.
Our other mentally ill client is a much tougher case.
Also paranoid, she presents as fairly normal until you’ve talked with her for a few minutes. She’s young, attractive, and will be mentally and physically destroyed if she ever ends up on the streets.
Her mother does her best to find help for her daughter, but so far Amy’s symptoms are recalcitrant to treatment. (Again, not her real name.)
Amy’s a big girl. And unlike Theresa, Amy has a violent streak.
That means no group home will take her. And when she assaults her stepfather, who is her primary victim, they call the police because they don’t know what else to do.
The call turns into a domestic violence charge because, once the police are called, somebody’s leaving in handcuffs (which is a topic for a whole ’nother day).
And domestic violence in Ohio is an escalating offense. Meaning the more times you’re convicted of domestic violence, the higher (worse) the charge.
Amy has been found competent to stand trial by our local competency mill, so the charges aren’t going away despite my boss’s best efforts, knowing that Amy’s completely out of touch with reality and just came off a month’s hospitalization in a psych ward.
Again, she seems okay if you don’t engage with her for an extended period of time, which led the Judge to declare, “SHE SEEMS FINE TO ME,” from the bench.
I may never get over that. Sometimes I feel like I’m in an episode of Andy Griffith.
We’re off the case because of Amy’s combativeness. She insists we were representing her mother and stepfather rather than her, which means we had to cut her loose.
Amy is also under a guardianship.
Amy’s going to be found guilty of yet another charge of domestic violence (the next time will be a felony) because she comes into frame on the video windmilling her arms and pummeling her stepdad from behind.
She sounds perfectly normal on the bodycam.
She is not.
So back in the day the mentally ill were, rightly or wrongly, locked up in "asylums" where they got little or no treatment, and often abuse. States in search of budget cuts decided they were all "cured" and turned them out on the streets. There they joined the army of homeless (which is our TRUE zombie apocalypse) and got addicted to drugs. And also abused. States that still have effective law enforcement use the same song and dance that you have described. So if someone has an illness, be it mental or physical, they should get treatment, right? We call that "health care", which is in reality "sick care" because it's ever so much more profitable to get people to the brink, and then gouge them out of every possible cent to stay above ground. And even that level of care is available only to those with the resources to pay for it, which excludes nearly all of the mentally ill. As it stands now, our policy for the mentally ill is essentially slow motion euthanasia. Leave them on the street until they overdose, get murdered, or choose suicide by cop. People, who would demand the gallows for anyone that treated an animal this way, simply ignore them, call the police to have them removed, or move to a neighborhood where there are none of "those people". Anyone who has survived the last 2 years in the US can see that we're all on the brink of madness. When the tipping point is reached, and there are sufficient numbers of mentally ill roaming the streets, we will see the fabled apocalypse, but these zombies don't want your brains. Only your food, money, and shelter. While you're nailing up the boards over the doors and windows, embrace the regret that our leaders didn't do something instead of lining their pockets and taking refuge in their plush boltholes.
Both of these cases sound heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing this stories, Bev!