Lawsuit demands care for mentally ill incarcerated veterans

Case alleges cruel, unusual punishment

Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, February 24, 2007

A federal lawsuit is demanding that Colorado provide mental health care to hundreds of mentally ill inmates and parolees who are military veterans.

The suit was filed by well- known civil rights attorney Anne Sulton, who is seeking class-action status for the case.

The primary plaintiff is a veteran who pleaded guilty to theft in 2000 and in the next six years was not given treatment for his bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

The man, Chris Bernard Hughes, 51, repeatedly walked away from community corrections. His parole was revoked for leaving a homeless shelter without telling his parole officer. His lawsuit blames this behavior on his untreated illness.

The suit says that the Colorado Department of Corrections and Denver Community Corrections, by not providing treatment, are "fostering an environment wherein mentally ill offenders will fail" and be returned to prison.

The case also accuses the defendants of "intentionally revoking his parole because he did what they knew or should have known he would do - simply walk away from a homeless shelter."

Both agencies and the state attorney general's office declined comment, citing the pending litigation.

After Hughes pleaded guilty to the theft charge, a judge sentenced him to four years in community corrections and ordered that he "shall receive mental health treatment with medications" and substance abuse treatment, the filing says. But officials did not follow the court order and were "deliberately indifferent" to his serious medical needs, the lawsuit says.

It alleges cruel and unusual punishment and violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The suit seeks class-action status on behalf of all incarcerated, honorably discharged veterans receiving Veterans Affairs care for their service-connected disabilities, whose incarceration is related to the failure of prisons and jails to provide them with mental health care. The filing estimates that 100-400 inmates fall into the class.

The class would be far larger if not limited to these military veterans. Colorado estimates that 19 percent of its 23,395 inmates are mentally ill.

The legislature provides funds for many of these prisoners to receive psychiatric medications, but it has allocated little for counseling. Community Corrections also has few facilities for the mentally ill.

The suit says 45 percent of Colorado offenders received mental health services in 2000 but that dropped to 20 percent by 2004, after a $1 million funding cut.

Sulton said she limited the case to these veterans because parole and community corrections officials cannot plead limited resources in failing to arrange mental health treatment for them.

"All you have to do is make a call and get the VA to take care of them. It takes 10 seconds," said Sulton, the former Denver attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She is now based in Olympia, Wash.

VA spokeswoman Rebecca Sawyer Smith said the VA provides care to its qualified veterans when they are on parole but not while they are in prison.

Hughes received no medications until 2006, when he was in the Denver County Jail, Sulton said. There, a psychiatrist prescribed a medication that works and Hughes' condition immediately improved, Sulton said. Now that he is back in the state prison system, she doesn't know if he is getting medication.

Sulton became widely known in Denver when she defended Gil Webb II, a teenager whose stolen car slammed into a Denver police cruiser in 1997, killing one police officer and injuring another.

She sued Denver for violating the teen's civil rights after TV news footage showed Webb being slammed onto a gurney by paramedics and police.

imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5438