ABA Journal feature examines how routine forced medication has become in competency restoration
Writer Lee Nacozy uses the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting case, in which the defendant was found incompetent and the state court upheld medicating him over objection under Sell v. United States, to examine the wider practice. Georgetown law professor Susan McMahon says Sell's general standards tilt toward medicating defendants and that judges tend to default to ordering it.
The article cites McMahon's 2013 analysis finding that courts approved involuntary medication in 49 of 77 cases where it was raised in the decade after Sell, and notes lower courts have cited Sell more than 500 times. It also quotes a state hospital psychologist who defends the need for Sell hearings and describes how the Colorado case has stayed in competency limbo with 90-day reviews.
The piece is an advocacy-leaning feature rather than a data study, but it brings a national audience into a core restoration question: how far a state may go in medicating people to make them ready for trial, and how long the process can keep a case on hold.
Source: Competency on trial: Judges routinely force medication on mentally unstable defendants — ABA Journal, by Lee Nacozy
← Back to the map