HARTFORD — State officials grappling with the case of Francis Anderson were hoping members of the judiciary committee Monday would pass legislation they said would have closed a loophole in state laws that address where to house legally insane criminals deemed too dangerous for the state’s maximum-security psychiatric hospital.
But Senate Bill 1027, which sought to clarify laws already on the books regarding criminal defendants with psychiatric disabilities, never made it out of the committee. It was among 45 bills that died Monday due to what legislators are calling fallout from an email dispute between two legislators fighting over the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Chase T. Rogers.
Staff members at the Whiting Forensic Division of Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown said Tuesday that they were disappointed that the bill giving the Psychiatric Security Review Board, which monitors people acquitted of crimes by reason of insanity, authority to transfer violent legally insane patients charged with a criminal offense to the Department of Correction, did not move out of the committee.
They said the legislation was needed to protect the safety of both employees and other patients injured recently in violent attacks at the facility.
“There’s a mental-health crisis in this state, and the judiciary committee has an opportunity to address a major issue in maintaining functionality within Whiting,” Tim Murphy, a veteran forensic nurse at Whiting for 17 years, said Tuesday.
In testimony earlier this month before the judiciary committee, Murphy told committee members that managing violence at Whiting is part of the job, “but there are some people that are simply too violent — and whose violence is not treatable — to be managed in this setting and that detracts from every patient’s treatment, and everyone’s safety.”
According to police reports, Murphy is one of the staff members injured by Anderson in two separate assaults at Whiting.
Anderson, 45, was acquitted by reason of mental disease or defect in August 2013 of charges of assaulting a correctional officer and breach of peace. He was committed to Whiting for a period of 10 years. He had been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
But in less than a year there, Anderson was arrested multiple times and charged with assaulting staff members and patients in violent attacks and altercations. In what some called an unprecedented move, Superior Court Judge David P. Gold set a monetary bond for Anderson at an arraignment in August, ensuring that Anderson would be in the custody of the Department of Correction — not at Whiting — while his cases were adjudicated.
Not setting bail, Gold said, would have meant those found not guilty by reason of insanity would be free to commit however many serious crimes they wanted with the guarantee that they would be returned to the hospital with the same victimized staff and patients.
Since then, Anderson has been fighting to stay at Whiting, taking his case to the state’s highest court. His appeal of Gold’s ruling is pending before the state Supreme Court.
In arguments there in January, Anderson’s attorney, Public Defender Monte P. Radler, told the justices that Anderson’s confinement at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut’s super-maximum security prison — where he is currently being held — has deprived Anderson of his right to appropriate psychiatric treatment afforded to him after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Radler — with backing from the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association — opposed Senate Bill 1027, telling the judiciary committee earlier this month that insanity acquittees are entitled to the Patients’ Bill of Rights protections.
Radler said the proposed legislation sets up “irreconcilable conflicts between various statutes and established public policies, and should be rejected at this time as being premature in light of the pending Anderson decision” before the state Supreme Court.
“Public policy, as reflected in statutory schemes involving insanity acquittees, does not favor incarceration of the criminally insane,” Radler said “Courts, including the Connecticut Supreme Court, have long recognized that psychiatric commitment is not a punishment, society having deemed it improper to morally condemn people who commit crimes due to a mental disease or defect, and that society gains nothing from incarcerating a mentally ill man who cannot appreciate his punishment.”
Dr. Michael A. Norko, director of forensic services of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, testified earlier this month before the judiciary committee that his department worked with the Psychiatric Security Review Board, corrections officials and prosecutors to come up with “a fair and reasonable way to manage what can be a very dangerous situation for the patients and staff in the Whiting Forensic Division.”
Norko said that Whiting currently does not have the tools to address violent patients who do not have an active psychiatric illness, and do not meet criteria for a hospital level of care, and though state law does address civil patients who are transferred to Whiting from prison and patients who are transferred to Whiting from DOC for restoration of competence to stand trial, no current laws address how to handle insanity acquittees at Whiting who are violent because of their antisocial personalities and who do not, or at least no longer, exhibit signs of serious mental illness.
Norko said proposed amendments to the law would allow Whiting to manage these patients either by conditional release from the hospital while the individual remains under the PSRB, or by discharge from the PSRB, or by arrest and prosecution for serious violent behavior.
Mary Kate Mason, spokeswoman for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said in a statement Tuesday that since the bill did not move out of the judiciary committee, the department “is evaluating additional security measures that can be legally put in place to protect patients and staff,” issues that “would have been resolved by the passage of the bill.”
Mason said regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, the department “will continue to provide a safe, therapeutic milieu for patients and staff.”
Murphy said Whiting employees are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision, hoping the justices do not revoke the bond on Anderson, a move, he said, that would make it easier for any violent insanity acquittee to get “get-out-of-jail-free cards, no matter how many assaults they commit at Whiting.”
