Rep. Christine Chandler
House Judiciary Committee Chair
By NICHOLAS GILMORE
The Santa Fe New Mexican
Members of the House Judiciary Committee appear ready to support a bipartisan proposal to change the state’s criminal competency laws as part of a larger package of public safety measures.
If approved when the committee takes up the bill next week, House Bill 4 will head to the floor of the state House of Representatives, having cleared its second House committee.
The bill would provide a process for evaluations of competency as well as dangerousness that can be used to order involuntary commitment to inpatient treatment for some criminal suspects. The law would also provide for up to 90-day “competency restoration” outpatient treatment programs to be ordered by judges for suspects of lower-level crimes.
Most committee members expressed support for the bill. They are scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to recommend the measure, rolled into a package of other public safety-related bills including one discussed Friday that would add to state law a federal prohibition on “glock switches” that allow semiautomatic weapons to be made fully automatic.
Some mental health advocates and public defenders expressed reluctance to support the bill during the hearing Friday, but police officers and others testified in support.
The measure was introduced by Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, the committee chair; its co-sponsors include Republican Rep. Andrea Reeb of Clovis and Sen. Crystal Brantley of Elephant Butte.
Chandler said the bill takes a “two-pronged approach,” addressing dangerous individuals who have been charged with serious crimes as well as expanding pathways to behavioral health treatment.
The effort to alter the state’s competency laws is meant to be coupled with major spending increases on behavioral health care, including a billion-dollar trust fund and hundreds of millions in potential allocations for health care infrastructure.
State government staff presenting the bill acknowledged the outpatient “restoration” treatment called for in the bill does not currently exist across the state. They said the hope is that huge investments during the current session can go toward building up such treatment across the state, and in the meantime, judges will not be able to order anyone to such outpatient treatment that doesn’t yet exist in their communities.
New Mexico courts currently dismiss charges and release those who are not found to be competent to stand trial, Chandler said, adding competency comes into question in about 2% to 5% of criminal cases across the state.
A former incarnation of a bill to change criminal competency laws was pushed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham during a special session she called last year, but some providers and lawmakers said at the time the proposal needed work. The current proposal would expand the list of crimes that qualify for involuntary commitment.
The bill is supported by law enforcement, including New Mexico State Police and Santa Fe and Las Cruces police. Leadership from the three agencies told the committee Friday they believed the law would address many of the repeat offenders that take up police resources.
Patsy Romero, a spokesperson for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told the committee involuntary commitment should be a last resort, since it “does not uphold the dignity of the individual.”
“We understand the goal of the of this legislation, but the current competency statute, as it reads right now, is already meeting that need,” Romero said. “And the most important piece that we’re missing here is the community restoration programs — they do not exist.”
The state Law Offices of the Public Defender spoke in favor of some aspects of the bill and against others.
“We do support some of the underlying goals of the bill, but we also feel strongly that the criminal legal system is ill-equipped to address mental health issues,” Kim Chavez Cook told the committee. “While we appreciate the public safety goal of having fewer defendants’ cases dismissed, we would like to see more of a focus on voluntary treatment and not just the involuntary treatment that this bill is focused on.”
Chief Public Defender Ben Baur said “we think something needs to be done,” although Baur said the office has concerns with expanding the list of criminal offenses that are eligible for forcing someone into treatment or civil commitment.
The bill would allow involuntary commitment for people who are charged with murder, rape, child abuse, sex crimes against children, human trafficking, aggravated arson, a felony involving the use of a firearm or the infliction of great bodily harm.
“The issue is that a lot of these people are actually not guilty,” Baur said. “And so, if there’s some kind of assumption that what we’re getting to is finding them guilty, I’ve represented many people who, when we would have gone down to the tax were actually incorrectly around justly charged. Please everybody, keep that in mind as we go forward.”