Court Opinion

ID: 9728052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:56:55.746053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:45.458490
License: Public Domain

KING, J.
I concur that the evidence in this case is insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant is gravely disabled within the meaning of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS). However, this case is exemplary of the human tragedies that have resulted from LPS.
Every citizen in California will surely be horrified to learn that the only possible legal recourse where a nondangerous mentally ill person continuously engages in unlawful conduct, but can provide food, clothing and shelter for herself, is to repeatedly place that person in jail for disturbing the peace. More should be expected from a civilized society. It would seem we are now reaping the harvest from seeds planted in the 1960’s by the Legislature’s adoption of California’s public policy toward the seriously disturbed, but nondangerous, mentally ill. A great many seriously disturbed men and women now inhabit the downtown areas of our major cities, too mentally ill to avoid running afoul of the law but not ill enough to be treated under an LPS conservatorship. If civil commitment with treatment provided to cope with mental illness is inappropriate for such persons, incarceration in county jail is certainly even less appropriate. Yet, as the facts in this case demonstrate, this is exactly what has resulted from the public policy provided by LPS.
Access to needed medical care is a basic human right, and is of particular importance to those whose very illnesses cause them to refuse care. Perhaps this is the proper time for the Legislature to reexamine public policy toward the mentally ill and ensure the provision of essential medical treatment to those who so desperately, both literally and figuratively, cry out for it.
Without some change in public policy, the phenomenon of dramatically increasing numbers of the mentally ill living on the streets and in the *912doorways of our major cities, and paying periodic visits to our county jails, will all too certainly become an integral part of contemporary society.