Support Failing for Gutted Bill on Mentally Ill Felons

Legislation originally intended to prevent the release of violent, mentally ill prisoners at the end of their terms easily passed the Assembly on Thursday--but was so drastically amended that it has lost the support of its chief backers, including Gov. George Deukmejian.

“The amendments basically gut the intent of the (governor’s) bill,” said Maureen Higgins, one of the governor’s lobbyists. Deukmejian had made the legislation, which could have blocked release of hundreds of prisoners a year, a major element of his anti-crime package.

The bills are expected to go to a conference committee next week in a final effort to work out differences between the Senate and Assembly.

In speech after speech earlier this year, Deukmejian tried to drum up support for his proposal to allow commitment of potentially dangerous prisoners to state hospitals at the end of their prison terms. Under his plan, officials would first have to convince a jury that the prisoner has a severe mental disorder and still poses a threat to society. The measure would apply only to individuals convicted of violent crimes.

The governor’s bill, introduced by Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), was bitterly opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Public Defenders Assn. These groups charged that the measure was an unconstitutional attempt at preventive detention and would enable the state to keep individuals locked up for the rest of their lives, even though they had served their prison sentences.

The Lockyer bill, along with similar legislation by Sen. Dan McCorquodale (D-San Jose), passed the Senate, but was amended in the Assembly at the urging of Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles).

The Margolin amendments, added over the objections of both McCorquodale and Lockyer, narrowed the scope of the measure and added protections for the prisoners. The two bills allow extended confinement and treatment only if the prisoner had been physically violent in the year before release from prison, or had made a “credible threat” to use force or violence. The threat would have to be related to the crime that originally had led to the prisoner’s conviction.

But few mentally ill individuals show that kind of violent behavior in the controlled environment of a state prison, according to Richard Mandella of the state Department of Mental Health.

As originally drafted, the legislation would have blocked the release of as many as 300 prisoners each year, according to one legislative estimate.

Before 1977, the state corrections system had broad powers to hold prisoners who posed a potential threat to society for prolonged periods. But for the last eight years, under the state’s determinant sentencing statutes, which were intended to lengthen prison stays, violent offenders are given specific sentences and cannot be held beyond their release dates.

Prisoners without disciplinary problems are now able to reduce their time by as much as half through work programs.

Mentally ill prisoners can be hospitalized at the end of their sentences under the state’s civil commitment procedures, but law enforcement officials have complained that the procedure is cumbersome and has been rarely used to keep individuals for prolonged periods.

Backers of the legislative proposals said that they are trying to find a constitutional way to prevent the release of individuals like Arthur Richard Jackson, the man convicted of the 1982 stabbing attack on actress Teresa Saldana.

Saldana has said that Jackson has written that he will renew his efforts to kill her if he is released. Officials of the California Medical Facility at Vacaville said that he could be released as early as Aug. 7, 1988.