No manner out: Why a mentally disabled man was jailed 9 years awaiting a homicide trial that by no means occurred

Eight years, 9 months, 24 days.

That’s how lengthy Lorenzo Mays waited inside a cell within the Sacramento County jail, struggling to know the court docket system properly sufficient to face trial for a 2010 homicide he insists he didn’t commit. 

Arrested at age 27, Mays’ mental incapacity made it laborious for him to make sense of phrases like “no contest” or “plea cut price” and even the function of a decide and jury. He informed one psychologist he thought he was in jail for witnessing a homicide.  

His incapacity left him weak to brutal assaults, documented in Sacramento County legal court docket and jail medical data. He spent so a few years in solitary confinement he developed a extreme vitamin D deficiency, based on a category motion lawsuit. He suffered from delusions and melancholy. He considered killing himself.

He has by no means been convicted of the crime for which he was charged — actually, he has by no means been tried. 

Greater than 200 years after the Sixth Modification assured the best to a speedy trial — a dedication additionally made within the California Structure — Mays spent years misplaced within the depths of a legal justice system that too typically fails to meet that promise for individuals with disabilities. 

“Our system is constructed to ensnare individuals like Lorenzo,” stated Tifanei Moyer, a Sacramento civil rights legal professional who labored with Mays for years.

California’s jails stay full of individuals with psychological diseases and mental disabilities. Psychological diseases embody such diagnoses as schizophrenia and bipolar dysfunction. Mental disabilities contain challenges with studying that have an effect on an individual’s potential to perform in every day life. 

As of November, 1,446 people within the state’s jails have been deemed incompetent to face trial resulting from psychological sickness and have been awaiting placement to a state psychological hospital, based on state information. That quantity, which has virtually quadrupled in lower than a decade, doesn’t account for individuals, like Mays, who’re discovered incompetent resulting from their mental disabilities.

Important backlogs even have been documented in different states. Out of sight, these weak individuals can languish behind bars for months, generally for years. 

Previously decade, California courts have tried to lower wait instances and improve accountability for this inhabitants. A state work group convened final yr by the California Well being & Human Providers Company and the Division of State Hospitals supplied tentative options to resolving the backlog. State businesses say they’ve labored in recent times to divert extra individuals with disabilities out of jails and to enhance native consciousness of competency legal guidelines. A couple of counties, together with Los Angeles and Sacramento, have launched revolutionary packages.

However many fear that lasting change stays elusive.  California, as an example, stays certainly one of solely 11 states that also permits juries to listen to competency circumstances, based on analysis by Stephanie Common, a Contra Costa County public defender who chairs the California Public Defenders Affiliation’s civil dedication/psychological well being committee. Common and different critics contend competency selections are higher dealt with by educated judges.

California lawmakers let a invoice die final yr that might have eliminated a protection legal professional’s burden to show a consumer is incompetent if a psychological well being skilled has already made that discovering. Below the invoice, the burden would have shifted to the prosecution to point out in any other case.

So who’s in charge for what occurred to Lorenzo Mays?

CalMatters discovered that many individuals in positions of authority have been accustomed to his yearslong ordeal, based on a evaluation of practically 5,000 pages of court docket and jail medical data. CalMatters additionally interviewed state and native officers, authorized consultants, Mays and other people near him. 

Mays is lastly out of jail — practically a 40-year-old man now — having been despatched to a bunch residence close to Sacramento earlier this yr. 

Throughout his years in jail, he was represented by no less than 4 totally different protection attorneys, got here earlier than no less than 22 totally different judges and was evaluated by no less than eight totally different psychologists, practically all of whom thought of him incompetent to face trial. For years, he has been a consumer of Alta California Regional Middle, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that contracts with the state Division of Developmental Providers to supply assist for individuals with developmental disabilities. 

The sheer period of time Mays spent awaiting trial is startling to many consultants.

Margot Mendelson, authorized director of the Jail Legislation Workplace, a Bay Space-based public curiosity legislation agency, calls the variety of individuals enduring “horrifying situations” in California jails after being discovered incompetent “a profound and stunning social failure.”

In 2018, Mays turned the lead plaintiff in a category motion lawsuit introduced by her group and Incapacity Rights California in opposition to Sacramento County. 

“Folks don’t know what goes on,” Mendelson stated. “There’s no significant oversight in any respect. It’s beautiful.”

Others, together with the Division of Developmental Providers, argue that Lorenzo Mays’ case is an excessive amount of of an outlier to attract any conclusions. The division made consultants obtainable to CalMatters to evaluation his case intimately. 

Amy Wall, a division spokesperson, described Mays’ state of affairs as “very distinctive.” 

“He’s possible the one one who has skilled this sort of unlucky set of circumstances,” she stated.

Lots of the systemic points that led to his lengthy incarceration have since been addressed, she stated, so his case could be seen as “an vital historical past lesson” however “not an correct illustration of present circumstances.” 

Alongside the way in which, sure people did converse up on Mays’ behalf. A competency coach tried for 3 years to teach Mays into understanding the court docket system earlier than she in the end informed the regional heart she might not work with him, citing “moral considerations” about his remedy throughout the authorized system in a 2016 letter she despatched to the state’s Division of Developmental Providers. An advocate from a Sacramento homeless providers company stated she repeatedly reached out to attorneys and jail psychiatrists to ask for assist. His older sister stated she known as anybody she might consider, making an attempt to get solutions.

Nonetheless, for a very long time, the system wouldn’t budge.

Crime and punishment

On Could 8, 2010, a 29-year-old man named Marcel Hatch was shot on the Eco Lodge motel in north Sacramento; he died on the hospital two days later. The day after Hatch died, police arrested 25-year-old Charles Antonio Williams at his Rocklin house and booked him on suspicion of murder. 

That August, police arrested 4 extra suspects — all siblings — in Sacramento and Las Vegas: Lorenzo Mays, then 27, his brothers Demetrius and Kenyatta, 30 and 18, and his 26-year-old sister, Brandy. Every was initially charged with homicide.

Within the years to come back, court docket data would flesh out particulars of the taking pictures: Williams and Hatch have been rival pimps understanding of the Eco Lodge, a shabby, low-budget motel that since has been torn down and changed with an auto dealership. Williams had kids with Mays’ sister, Candence, court docket paperwork state. 

The day earlier than the taking pictures, Williams and Hatch had gotten right into a battle, the data say, and Hatch knocked Williams unconscious and stole his cellular phone. 

On Could 8, Williams arrived at Mays’ dad and mom’ house with a battered, swollen face. Upon listening to what had occurred, Lorenzo’s older brother, Demetrius, stated he would attempt to assist deescalate the state of affairs, based on his lawyer’s sentencing memorandum and an account given by his youthful brother, Kenyatta, to the prosecutor and a detective.

Demetrius, Kenyatta and their sister Brandy climbed right into a black SUV with Williams and headed to the Eco Lodge. However Hatch was not there.

Lorenzo informed a psychologist years later that he had begged off that preliminary journey, based on his court docket file. However a number of hours later, the paperwork state, the group determined to go again to the Eco Lodge a second time and satisfied Lorenzo to hitch them. 

Lorenzo later informed medical doctors he thought there may be a fistfight. 

However, this time, somebody introduced a gun.

The siblings’ accounts to legislation enforcement, court docket officers and others differ on key particulars about what occurred subsequent — who stayed within the automobile, who received out, who held a gun, who pulled a set off. 

What they agree on: Hatch was there. He started to run. Somebody shot him. 

A couple of days later, Williams was arrested. In March 2011, a jury convicted him of first diploma homicide and sentenced him to life with the potential for parole. Two years after that, Brandy and Kenyatta pleaded responsible to  voluntary manslaughter, with a firearm enhancement. Kenyatta, a teen on the time, was sentenced to seven years; Brandy was sentenced to 12. A jury convicted Demetrius of the identical prices later that yr; he was sentenced to 12 years and likewise ordered to pay $9,130 to the property of Hatch’s late mom. She had been severely affected by her son’s loss of life, court docket data state, and he or she “consistently pictured him mendacity on the bottom bleeding.” 

For Lorenzo Mays, there can be no legal trial. 

There would, nevertheless, be ample punishment.

The authorized odyssey begins

Mays is a tall, soft-spoken man with a spherical face, a shy smile and lengthy locs he began rising when he first landed in jail a dozen years in the past. He’d initially deliberate to chop his hair after he was free; it now hangs near his waist. 

“I used to be able to get my case on the street,” he informed CalMatters. 

“They only informed me, I gotta preserve ready.” 

Along with his mental incapacity, legal court docket and jail medical data present, Mays has at instances been recognized with melancholy, bipolar dysfunction, psychosis and PTSD. Members of the family contend these situations solely worsened in jail.

Mays requested his medical data from the jail and shared them with CalMatters. CalMatters additionally reviewed his and his siblings’ Sacramento County legal court docket information.

As a result of Mays was certainly one of a number of co-defendants, he wasn’t represented by the Sacramento public defender’s workplace. As an alternative, he had a collection of battle attorneys — non-public attorneys appointed in lieu of a public defender.

After his arrest on Aug. 5, 2010, Mays was assigned his first legal professional, Dan Karalash. A couple of days later, he was arraigned alongside together with his siblings. Ten months later, the 4 got here earlier than a decide once more.  

Throughout that point, Mays waited in jail. Jail medical data and court docket paperwork present that he was in frequent fights and was repeatedly attacked by different individuals, at instances brutally.

Karalash, his first legal professional, stated he raised doubts early about Mays’ competency and psychological well being and was informed Mays can be despatched to Napa State Hospital. However the case was taken from him as soon as he left the panel of battle attorneys in spring 2012, he stated.

Reached by telephone earlier this month, he expressed shock in regards to the size of Mays’ incarceration: “Wow.”

For the overwhelming majority of defendants in California whose psychological capabilities will not be in query, legal courts are imagined to work like this:

Inside two working days of arrest, the defendants are arraigned. Then, if they’re charged with a felony, they’ve a proper to a speedy trial inside 60 days. (Yearslong delays can occur for these defendants, too).

However for these defendants flagged for attainable competency points, their legal proceedings — and the associated authorized protections —are paused. For that to occur, a protection legal professional or different court docket official first has to determine if the consumer has vital psychological sickness or cognitive impairment.

In April 2012, Sacramento Superior Courtroom Decide Tami R. Bogert appointed a psychologist to conduct a competency analysis.

The psychologist discovered Mays to have an IQ of 55 and really helpful he be despatched to a state hospital for additional analysis, based on a duplicate of the report shared by Incapacity Rights California. Extra psychologists who adopted additionally questioned his competence.

That August, Decide Bogert formally discovered Mays incompetent to face trial, that means he couldn’t adequately perceive legal proceedings or help in his personal protection.

By then, Mays was together with his second legal professional, Lisa Franco, who had taken over from Karalash that Could. She informed CalMatters she had thought of Mays to be “extraordinarily weak” and stated she visited him commonly to offer him updates.

Mays’ two-year anticipate a competency ruling, whereas problematic, just isn’t unusual, stated Common, the general public defender in Contra Costa County. Nearly all of her defendants have their competency decided extra rapidly, she stated, however some have waited so long as 4 years.

State statute provides the court docket as much as two years to “restore” a defendant’s potential to know the authorized system properly sufficient to face trial. To get there, the court docket can present defendants with competency coaching — a course of through which a “coach” makes an attempt to assist them perceive the authorized system properly sufficient to face trial. 

If defendants will not be deemed restored inside that two-year window, their circumstances could also be dismissed or they might be referred for conservatorship. In some circumstances, a district legal professional can elect to dismiss the fees, refile them and begin the clock another time.  

For a few years, in Mays’ case, none of that occurred.

In November 2012, a psychologist employed by Alta Regional Middle interviewed Mays on the Sacramento County jail. In his report, shared by Incapacity Rights California, the psychologist questioned whether or not Mays would ever “adequately profit” from competency coaching “because of the extreme impairment in his mental functioning.”

Mays says he tried to know what he was being taught in regards to the authorized system, as a result of he needed to battle his case. However the info, he informed CalMatters, went “in a single ear and out the opposite.”

Lastly, eight months after he was initially deemed incompetent, the court docket ordered him despatched to Porterville Developmental Middle.

Practically three years had handed since his arrest. Porterville, although, wouldn’t provide an answer.

Off the radar

Documentation of Mays’ disabilities dates again to his early childhood. 

In July 1991, when he was 8, a report from his Memphis public college famous he was “gradual to be taught,” based on Sacramento legal court docket paperwork. He stayed in particular schooling via highschool.

Mays was the seventh of 15 kids in a household that moved consistently: Texas to Alabama to Missouri to Mississippi to Tennessee. His father labored in building; his mom stayed residence. In keeping with accounts collected by psychologists through the years and filed within the legal court docket data, Mays’ childhood was tormented by bodily abuse, substance use and instability. As a teen, he was hospitalized a number of instances for self hurt, the accounts say.

His youthful sister, Brandy, now 38, remembers him liking college, smiling loads and making mates simply. His older sister, Sophia Carter, 42, stated he hardly ever received into bother and was recognized to interrupt up fights between mates.

When he was arrested in Sacramento years later within the homicide case, she stated, she and different relations have been puzzled. “We might at all times say, ‘Lorenzo? No, not Lorenzo.’” 

He graduated from Westwood Excessive College in Memphis in 2001, the primary of the siblings to take action.

However challenges persevered. In January 2010, he arrived in Sacramento for what was imagined to be a quick go to. Again residence in Tennessee, he had two younger kids with two totally different ladies. He had been homeless on and off, bouncing between jobs at Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Rooster, together with stints in landscaping and building. In 2004, he had been sentenced in Tennessee to 3 years on an assault cost, court docket data there present.

After he landed within the Sacramento County jail following the Eco Lodge taking pictures, court docket and jail medical data present, Mays was brutally attacked a number of instances through the first few years. These accounts embody being assaulted and overwhelmed badly by a bunch of different males. Early on, he additionally fractured his proper hand in three locations, and required surgical procedure. Over time, he complained continuously to medical doctors about vital ache on the surgical website, jail medical data present. 

Guards stored him in solitary confinement for many of his years in jail, based on the category motion lawsuit. Mays was allowed outdoors only a few hours every week, a lawyer concerned within the class motion stated.

The unit Mays was held in was a non-punishment unit designed to separate out inmates who have been typically “assaultive and laborious to handle,” based on an emailed assertion from Sacramento County’s sheriff’s spokesman Amar Gandhi. Gandhi famous that the classification of those people “was generally made utilizing outdated and off info” and that the county is working to cut back the numbers of people held there.  

Jail medical data present that, throughout Mays’ time in solitary, his pores and skin broke out in itchy rashes. He skilled hallucinations and tried to disregard the spirits he heard in his cell, based on his accounts to psychologists within the court docket data and sophistication motion lawsuit. To distract himself, he wrote consistently, and browse the Bible. 

However at instances he felt suicidal, court docket and jail medical data present. It was as if he was in a black tunnel, he informed CalMatters, and couldn’t see any mild. When he lastly did see mild, it turned out to be an oncoming prepare.

“My thoughts is at all times working wild,” he reportedly informed different guests.

For six or seven years, Suzi Ettin, an advocate from Loaves & Fishes who commonly visited Mays, stated she discovered him considerate, at all times asking questions on how she was doing and worrying about his kids in Tennessee. She describes him as virtually childlike in his demeanor. He was additionally artistic, typically sharing his songs and poems.

Over time, Ettin noticed Mays turning into extra withdrawn. His bodily and psychological well being diminished. Generally, she fearful sufficient that she contacted jail psychiatric providers to verify on him, she stated.

In all her years visiting the jail, she stated, she had by no means seen anybody change into “so invisible all through the complete system for therefore a few years.”

What number of Lorenzos are there?

Practically a 3rd of individuals in California jails have a psychological sickness, a determine that has leapt over the previous decade, based on a 2020 report by California Well being Coverage Methods. These defendants keep behind bars longer, the report stated. They land in solitary confinement extra typically. They’re extra more likely to try suicide and to be violently victimized by different individuals in jail. 

The report mirrors Lorenzo Mays’ expertise.

Many of the public dialogue about people who find themselves incompetent to face trial focuses on these with severe psychological diseases, like schizophrenia, who’re ready to get into state hospitals. For them, the typical wait time in California to get a state hospital mattress, as of October, was 92 days, based on the Division of State Hospitals. 

Folks with mental or different cognitive disabilities, corresponding to Mays, additionally comprise as much as a 3rd of individuals in jail, based on some estimates. The present common wait time for them to get into Porterville Developmental Middle in Tulare County, the one state hospital set as much as deal with legal defendants with mental and developmental disabilities, is 28 days. However prior to now, some protection attorneys say it has taken a number of months. (The Division of Developmental Providers didn’t present information on the variety of individuals on the waitlist to get into Porterville.)

These wait instances have been the topic of authorized motion. In 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California introduced a lawsuit, often called Stiavetti, in opposition to the Division of State Hospitals and the Division of Developmental Providers. The criticism stated the state was violating the rights of defendants deemed incompetent to face trial. The court docket agreed and, in 2019, ordered the state to switch these defendants to a state hospital inside 28 days.

Regardless of that, Emi McLean, a senior workers legal professional with the ACLU, stated the state of affairs is worse than in 2019.

Darrell Munn of Murrieta stated his grownup son spent virtually three years within the Twin Towers jail in Los Angeles earlier than a psychiatrist lastly checked out him and stated, “He shouldn’t be right here.” 

Throughout that point, Munn stated, his son — who’s recognized with varied psychological diseases, together with schizophrenia, manic melancholy and others and is accused of homicide — deteriorated a lot he began believing Illuminati and vampires have been working the jail. He nonetheless hasn’t been tried virtually 4 years later.

Common, the general public defender in Contra Costa County, stated she represented one consumer for years in a “fixed battle” with the Division of State Hospitals and the Division of Developmental Providers. 

The person, Marc Carr, has schizophrenia and mental incapacity and is accused of two murders. He’s “probably the most impaired shoppers I’ve ever labored with,” she stated. He spent seven and a half years on the Martinez Detention Facility earlier than lastly being moved to a extra acceptable facility this fall, she stated.

Hiren Patel, chief counsel of the Division of Developmental Providers, stated Carr’s case is “one other unicorn” and “much more difficult than Mr. Mays’ case.” 

He stated legal professional Common “actually has solely her facet of the story to inform.” The division declined to supply particulars on Carr’s case as a result of it’s pending litigation.

A scorching potato

How does a disabled man disappear into jail for nearly a decade?

Maybe by being nobody’s precedence. 

“It is extremely straightforward, within the system that we’ve, for it to appear like no person did something incorrect,” stated Aaron Fischer, a Bay Space-based legal professional who’s co-lead counsel on the Mays class motion case in opposition to Sacramento County. 

What occurred to Mays, he stated, demonstrates “an unlimited quantity of dysfunction and inertia within the legal justice system.

 “Nobody did something about it,” he stated. “All people concerned ought to have had a stake.”

So who, particularly, is accountable?

Some level to his protection attorneys. Others name out Alta Regional Middle and the Division of Developmental Providers. Nonetheless others criticize the Sacramento district legal professional or the native court docket system for failing to stick to timelines dictated by the legislation.

Patel, of the Division of Developmental Providers, stated Mays’ case was difficult by various components: Mays had moved lately to California from out of state and was not on the radar of the regional heart. Legal guidelines modified through the years he was in jail. A number of defendants required separate attorneys; Mays himself had no less than 4.

Because the years ticked by, the court docket itself didn’t appear positive what to do with Mays. 

In spring 2013, a decide ordered Mays despatched to Porterville Developmental Middle. However a current change in legislation allowed Porterville to refuse him, as a result of officers believed he was too harmful, legal court docket data present. 

With nowhere else to go, Mays stayed in jail.

A number of months after being rejected by Porterville, Mays received right into a battle with a fellow inmate who he stated picked on him and known as him names. He collected new assault and battery prices.

Subsequent, the court docket despatched Mays to a unique remedy facility, California Psychiatric Transitions. He solely lasted there a number of months. In keeping with the psychiatrist’s discharge abstract within the jail medical data, he was “a difficult affected person” who “has over-reported or feigned psychiatric signs.” 

In January of 2015, he returned to the Sacramento jail. 

In late 2015, the Sacramento district legal professional opted for a brand new tactic. Psychologists and judges had thought of Mays incompetent. So, why not ask a jury? 

Ten months later, a jury trial to find out his competency lastly occurred. 

At that time, Mays’ third protection legal professional, Michael Aye, submitted a quick questioning whether or not such a trial was even authorized, given how a lot time had handed.

The jury deadlocked Nov. 20, 2015, based on the court docket document; the decide declared a mistrial. The district legal professional requested a brand new jury trial. 

Three weeks later, Aye was changed. Regardless of a number of requests by CalMatters, Aye declined to touch upon the case.

For the subsequent three years, Mays was represented by his ultimate court-appointed legal professional, Kenneth Rosenfeld of Sacramento. Rosenfeld didn’t reply to repeated telephone calls and emails requesting remark for this story.

By then, various individuals have been elevating considerations. Regardless of a regional heart psychologist’s early admonitions that competency coaching possible wouldn’t work for Mays, the company had employed a coach for him named Anne Kitt. 

Over time, based on letters obtained by CalMatters, Kitt developed severe reservations about Mays’ case.

 By 2016, she had had sufficient. That August, she wrote a three-page letter to the Division of Developmental Providers questioning how the case was being dealt with within the court docket. She stated she might not work with Mays “because of the moral considerations I’ve with this case.” 

The regional heart, she stated within the letter, had suggested her that taking authorized motion to assist him “was not in my purview as a competency coach.”

Six years had handed since Mays’ arrest.

Makes an attempt at reform

In recent times, the backlog of individuals deemed incompetent to face trial has drawn growing consideration in California and across the nation. In April 2020, the State Justice Institute, a nationwide nonprofit established to assist enhance the standard of justice in state courts, launched a report providing potential options.

Amongst these options: diverting extra circumstances from the legal justice system, strengthening community-based remedy, avoiding competency proceedings for misdemeanor crimes, and creating and imposing rational timelines on the court docket and different elements of the legal justice system. 

The report’s authors additionally really helpful offering case managers and making certain extra frequent case opinions. In any other case, they famous, “Human nature is to procrastinate.”

Common, the Contra Costa public defender, stated she has been seeking to different states for greatest practices, as properly.

“It’s form of exceptional to me how far behind California is on the curve,” she stated.

 Most states, she stated, not permit juries to attempt competency circumstances. Not solely are jury trials time-consuming, she and different public defenders say, however they may also be imbalanced. Not like skilled judges, they are saying, jurors are inclined to take into consideration the main points of the crime, even when they’re not related to somebody’s competence. 

Patel, of the Division of Developmental Providers, stated the division has made adjustments within the years since Mays’ arrest that particularly have an effect on individuals with developmental disabilities who’re discovered incompetent. 

For example, he stated, competency coaching for these with mental disabilities is not allowed to be completed inside a California jail setting because it was for Mays (it nonetheless could be for these with psychological sickness). 

Patel famous that the division now has a authorized proper to sure paperwork about legal circumstances that it couldn’t demand prior to now to tell its selections about admission to Porterville Developmental Middle.

 And the division is offering coaching about competency legal guidelines to judges, district attorneys and protection attorneys across the state.

The Division of State Hospitals can be tackling the difficulty. Final yr, the California Well being & Human Providers Company and the Division of State Hospitals convened a piece group, which issued a report on attainable responses to the backlog. Lots of the proposed options echoed these within the State Justice Institute report.

This yr, the state funds included $535.5 million to start implementing a few of these options, an quantity that may ultimately improve to $638 million yearly.

Within the meantime, a number of counties have begun rolling out their very own options. 

MacLean, of the American Civil Liberties Union, factors to a Los Angeles community-based restoration program that “regardless of overwhelming and acknowledged success” has not been replicated. 

That program, with the assist of the Division of State Hospitals, takes individuals with psychological sickness who’re accused of felonies and are deemed incompetent and locations them in unlocked residential remedy packages in the neighborhood. Not too long ago, the county expanded the variety of beds from 315 to 515. 

Michael Salmaggi, a Los Angeles public defender who represents individuals with mental disabilities, stated the county has moved towards consolidating competency hearings underneath a number of skilled judges in a devoted psychological well being court docket. Earlier than that, when any legal court docket might oversee competency, he stated, many judges have been unfamiliar with the legislation and particular timelines. He famous that jury trials to find out competency are “virtually unprecedented” within the county.

Sacramento’s personal public defender’s workplace has additionally launched revolutionary pilot packages in recent times.

In 2018 and 2019, Tiffanie Synnott, a supervising public defender, obtained 5 grants to create pilot packages for defendants with psychological well being considerations and/or homelessness. She has since constructed out packages to ship social staff and legislation college students into the jail to judge defendants’ wants forward of trial and, with the assist of the Division of State Hospitals, to divert individuals with felonies who’re deemed incompetent to face trial from jail. 

There’s a catch, she notes: These packages are solely obtainable for people who’re represented by a public defender. 

Lorenzo Mays, who had a collection of personal, battle attorneys, wouldn’t have certified for any of them.

Motion… and alter?

In fall 2018, Lorenzo Mays was nonetheless in jail. A proposed second jury trial to find out his competency had been postponed. The regional heart and the Division of Developmental Providers have been more and more elevating considerations about how lengthy he had spent in jail. 

His father, Samuel, who was then residing in a crowded house in Sacramento, was fearful.

“You set a chicken in a cage, you bought to let him out someday, or he’ll die,” he informed CalMatters.

Lorenzo’s older sister, Sophia, was fearful too. She thought her brother appeared to be getting mentally and bodily sicker. 

“I’ve cried a lot the place I can’t cry no extra,” she stated.

She thought her brother appeared more and more delusional when she spoke with him. 

By then, their youthful brother, Kenyatta, had already been tried, sentenced and launched.

Different individuals have been additionally beginning to increase alarms. 

Suzi Ettin, the advocate from Loaves & Fishes, had taken her frustrations to Incapacity Rights California. 

One of many first attorneys from Incapacity Rights who met with Mays was Tifanei Moyer. Mays appeared to her to be reflective and delicate. If issues felt too painful, he informed her, he would slide photographs of his kids underneath his mattress so he wouldn’t be reminded of all he was lacking. 

And but he didn’t appear offended.

“He had no idea of the truth that this isn’t okay, that this shouldn’t be regular,” stated Moyer, now a senior workers legal professional on the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Space. “He was doing his greatest to endure it.”

In 2018, Incapacity Rights California and the Jail Legislation Workplace introduced a category motion lawsuit in opposition to Sacramento County. The criticism cited “harmful, inhumane and degrading situations,” together with the intensive use of solitary confinement on inmates with severe psychological sickness. Mays was named the lead plaintiff.

In March of that yr, Decide Patrick Marlette discovered that Mays’ competency couldn’t be restored. In November, the district legal professional agreed to drop the fees. A month later, Decide Lawrence Brown ordered him again to Porterville Developmental Middle. 

This time, he was accepted.

‘I’m nonetheless residing’

That spring, Mays walked out of the Sacramento County jail for the final time. On Could 28, 2019, he arrived on the Tulare County heart’s sprawling campus of squat yellow and beige buildings.

He remained fearful that medical doctors had planted a monitoring system in his hand throughout his surgical procedure virtually 9 years earlier.

“I would like my privateness again,” he confided to a CalMatters customer, in a low voice.

Porterville, he stated later, was “like being in class with a whole lot of guidelines and stuff.”

However issues have been higher there, too.

Then, earlier this yr, Mays was launched to a bunch residence on a quiet cul-de-sac close to Sacramento. He has a job now.

Sometime quickly, he hopes to get his personal house, enroll in school, spend time together with his kids in Tennessee and “do one thing productive with my life.”

He has heard imprecise point out of the Mays consent decree, a proper settlement in early 2020 with Sacramento County to enhance remedy of individuals with disabilities within the jail.

The county, in a press launch in regards to the consent decree, famous that it had been engaged on these points for years earlier than in the end agreeing to settle the lawsuit to keep away from “vital litigation prices and the chance of doubtless more difficult mandates being imposed by the court docket.”

The county is now discussing attainable methods to cut back the jail inhabitants, attorneys concerned within the litigation say. They’ve created a brand new outpatient psychological well being program. Oversight has elevated. 

However a scathing report launched in October as a part of the Mays consent decree suggests the jail remains to be beset with issues. The report describes entry to medical care within the jail as “damaged,” with “filthy” situations, power workers shortages and vital overcrowding.

In a written assertion to CalMatters, the county acknowledged “room for enchancment” but additionally famous that it has been in a fan of full compliance inside many areas of the consent decree and “continues to do the work to be in full compliance.”

 At a heated assembly in early December, county supervisors voted to cut back the general jail inhabitants and to assist a $450 million proposal for building of a brand new jail constructing to alleviate overcrowding and deal with psychological well being considerations.

Some say the Mays consent decree is having reverberations not simply in Sacramento, however across the state, as different counties watch Sacramento’s efforts to cut back its jail inhabitants and bolster psychological well being providers.

Mays stays confused about what occurred in his case — why he met with so many attorneys psychologists, why he by no means stood trial for against the law, why he stayed in a California jail for therefore lengthy. 

Nobody, he stated, has ever actually defined.

“I’ve been useless for a very long time,” he stated. “However I’m nonetheless residing.”