CalMatters traces a man jailed nearly nine years in Sacramento without trial as California's IST waitlist hits 1,446
CalMatters reported on Lorenzo Mays, arrested in 2010 at age 27 and found incompetent to stand trial because of an intellectual disability. He remained in Sacramento County jail for nearly nine years, passing through multiple attorneys, judges and evaluators, before charges were dropped in November 2018 and he moved to a developmental center in 2019.
The article places his case against statewide numbers: as of November 2022, 1,446 people in California jails were waiting for state hospital placement after incompetence findings, a figure the story says has nearly quadrupled in under a decade, with an average wait of 92 days. It also describes the 2022 budget response of more than $500 million, later increased, and reforms such as barring competency training for intellectually disabled defendants in jail.
The piece is a long-form account of how the competency system can trap people with developmental disabilities, a group for whom restoration treatment is poorly matched.
Source: No way out: Why a mentally disabled man was jailed nine years awaiting a murder trial that never happened — CalMatters, by Jocelyn Wiener
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