Arkansas bill would split fitness and criminal-responsibility exams to cut jail time awaiting State Hospital evaluations
State Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, working with an Arkansas Bar Association task force, drafted SB 42 to bifurcate Arkansas's forensic evaluations. Courts had been ordering both a fitness evaluation and a criminal-responsibility evaluation before trial, which left defendants waiting in jail for the longer, more complex assessment and risked defendants waiving Fifth Amendment protections by discussing the offense. Under the bill only a defendant could request the responsibility evaluation.
The article gives the volume: in 2016, 1,542 defendants were referred to the State Hospital for both evaluations and 1,354 were completed; 1,052 were found fit, 202 not fit, and 58 not criminally responsible. It notes a 2012 legislative testimony that defendants had waited as long as eight months in jail for an evaluation. The bill was scheduled for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing the next day.
Source: Hutchinson bill to school judges on psych evaluations — Arkansas Times, by Leslie Newell Peacock
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