In 2018, Jeremy Smith was found incompetent to stand trial for an alleged parole violation in San Diego. By the time he was finally sent to a state hospital for competency restoration treatment, Jeremy had sat in jail without any medication or treatment for almost an entire year - 343 days.

Jeremy, who has schizophrenia, was tackled in order to be force medicated when he was finally transferred to the state hospital in San Bernardino. One of the employees was injured when he tackled Jeremy, who was charged with causing the injury and sent to jail four days later with no continuity of care. Nine days after that, Jeremy was allowed to plead guilty at his very first court appearance in San Bernardino, without his competency ever being restored or adequately addressed. Once Jeremy started a new two-year prison sentence, his charges in San Diego were dropped.

What happened to the original judgment of incompetency? If it would have violated Jeremy’s right to due process to stand trial in San Diego, then it violated Jeremy’s right to due process to stand trial in San Bernardino.

Medically vulnerable Californians like Jeremy are receiving torture instead of treatment at this very moment because there are insufficient safeguards in our courts for people who are mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Under current CA law, defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial can still have their uncontrollable symptoms criminalized, even if those symptoms occur at the very place they are sent to receive treatment to be restored to competency, and even if they are never restored to competency.

Incarcerating these individuals violates their rights to adequate medical care and due process, and it doesn’t make the problem go away - it only makes things worse because it’s torture instead of treatment for our most vulnerable and it betrays one of the bedrock principles of our justice system: due process.

That’s why the CA Assembly and Senate must pass the Vulnerable Defendant’s Right to a Fair Trial Act, and Governor Gavin Newsom must sign it into law. The Vulnerable Defendant’s Right to a Fair Trial will ensure that competency to stand trial is established at the beginning of new court proceedings for defendants previously deemed incompetent to stand trial who were never restored to competency. The Vulnerable Defendant's Right to a Fair Trial will protect due process for defendants with disabilities and put a stop to one of the ways poor individuals with mental illness are endlessly cycled through the criminal legal system instead of receiving adequate treatment.

Join #MomsAgainstTorture in calling on California lawmakers to enact the Vulnerable Defendant’s Right to a Fair Trial.