Federal judge finds Alabama still far out of compliance on competency waits three years after the consent decree
Judge Myron Thompson's 18-page opinion in Hunter v. Boswell reviewed the compliance data the parties had filed. Wait times for outpatient evaluations had improved from an average of about 294 days in April 2018 to about 137 days in January 2021, still above the decree's thresholds. Inpatient evaluation waits had stayed stubbornly long, and average waits for male defendants to be admitted to Taylor Hardin for restoration were about 366 days.
The court calculated that a man ordered for an outpatient evaluation and then admitted for restoration could expect to wait roughly 503 days in January 2021, compared with about 511 days when the decree was entered, against a decree that was meant to bring the combined wait to about two months. The judge noted the figures reflect small numbers of detainees in some months.
The order directed the Department of Mental Health to file a proposed remedial plan by April 27, 2021, asked the parties to consider whether an outside expert could help, and set a series of monitoring conferences through December 2021. Monitoring had by then been extended to January 2023.
Source: Order | Hunter v. Beshear M.D. Ala. | Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse — Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse (University of Michigan Law School), by U.S. District Court, M.D. Ala. (Judge Myron H. Thompson)
← Back to the map