Alaska’s Justice System Struggles to Define Mental ‘Competency’
In what experts call a major flaw in the state’s criminal justice system, defendants can pretend to be mentally unfit to avoid standing trial.
Landwebs
In Alaska, a man accused of assaulting a woman behind a grocery store who was later found incompetent to stand trial for multiple felonies including assault, sexual assault, and robbery, and was then released back into the community, has highlighted a major flaw in the state’s criminal justice system, reports Alaska’s News Source. John Skidmore, deputy attorney general for the criminal division of the Alaska Department of Law, said there are multiple factors involved when deciding if a defendant is competent to stand trial. Even though an assessment is done to see if they can assist in their defense, and whether the individual understands the nature of their conduct, Skidmore says that in some cases it’s possible for a defendant to have been deemed competent at some point in the past, but be deemed incompetent in future cases.
Allen Levy, a licensed psychological associate, said that mental health has become criminalized by default because the state doesn’t provide proper support or resources for treatment. “We have a crisis, and now we have members of the public of course who are being injured, assaulted, raped, and killed by mentally ill people and they are not getting the justice they deserve,” Levy said. “Because the perpetrators can’t be tried because they lack the ability to assist in their own defense, and the options of getting them treated or stabilized to the point where they could are not available.”
