Case Focuses Attention on Controversial California Law : Courts: Oxnard man who killed his father was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Six months later, he says he’s better and wants out of the hospital.

Six months after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the murder of his father, Jesus Garcia Jr. is back in Ventura County Superior Court, claiming his sanity has been restored.

No one is rushing to release Garcia from the mental hospital where he has been confined since October.

But the 32-year-old former Oxnard man will get his day in court, protected by a state law that allows him to claim his sanity has been restored after only six months of treatment, and every year thereafter until he is released.

It is a law that worries Ventura County prosecutors so much they once tried unsuccessfully to change it.

But defense attorneys say the law is vital to ensure that criminally insane individuals don’t get lost in the system.

“I think it’s healthy, because it makes sure these people aren’t warehoused and forgotten,” Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman said.

In Garcia’s case, it was last Memorial Day when his father, Jesus Garcia Sr., was stabbed to death with an eight-inch knife while sleeping on a living room couch. No motive was ever established, but the younger Garcia told his attorney he heard the television talking to him.

The younger Garcia was found guilty of second-degree murder in September, 1992. Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch then conducted a non-jury trial to determine whether Garcia was sane when he killed his father.

Storch called it a “very close case,” but ruled that Garcia, who was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic in 1985, fit the legal requirements to be found not guilty by reason of insanity: He did not understand the nature and quality of his actions when he killed his father, and was not aware that it was wrong.

Now, six months later--the earliest possible opportunity--Garcia has notified the court that he is better and wants out of the hospital. Storch asked Deputy Public Defender Douglas W. Daily to interview Garcia and report back at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol J. Nelson, who prosecuted Garcia, said she resents the law that allows him to return to court so quickly and claim he is now sane.

“It trivializes life to say that ‘I was so sick I killed somebody, but I’m all better now,’ ” Nelson said. “It trivializes life, and it trivializes mental illness.”

The prosecutor said she believes it is foolish that the entire criminal justice system must respond to Garcia’s claim.

“We’re now all sucked into the delusions of a sick man,” Nelson said. “He is deluded into thinking he is well.”

The Ventura County district attorney’s office tried to change the law in 1990, when prosecutors persuaded then-Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) to sponsor a bill that called for longer hospitalization for people deemed criminally insane. The bill died in committee and never made it to the full Assembly for a vote, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said.

“Frankly, that just concerns us that someone who commits as heinous and serious a crime as a homicide potentially could be subject to release within six months of their hospitalization,” McGee said. “I think in a situation like this, there is a certain logic in making (the length of hospitalization) the same as a convicted person’s wait for parole eligibility.”

For second-degree murder, an inmate must be imprisoned for 7 1/2 years before he is eligible for parole.

Assistant Public Defender Jean L. Farley disagreed that a longer minimum length of hospitalization is necessary.

The public is adequately protected by the current system, Farley said, because a criminally insane person cannot be released until a court determines he is no longer a danger to himself or to society.

Farley said placing a lengthy minimum hospital stay on criminally insane defendants would be punishing them for being sick.

“That’s not the purpose of the decision that’s reached when someone is found not guilty by reason of insanity,” Farley said. “The legislative design is that this individual is different from the usual criminal. This individual does not deserve to be punished.”

McGee denied that prosecutors’ intent in trying to change the law is punitive.

“I don’t see it as a matter of punishment, so much,” he said. “We’re looking at it as a matter of treatment, and has a person that (was) seriously disturbed had time to recover from his illness. And frankly, we don’t think so.”

Nelson said allowing a mentally ill person to have a hearing every year interrupts their treatment and allows them to become obsessed with getting out of the hospital instead of staying in and getting well. She also complained about the cost of holding annual court hearings.

“My complaint is not about the Garcia case,” Nelson said. “I’m concerned about a legal system that doesn’t look at the price side of the menu. Nobody gets served by this, and the public gets taken to the cleaners financially.”

Farley said cost should not be a consideration, because medical discoveries may make it possible for some mental illnesses to be controlled to the point that a person will never again be a danger to society.

“Now you’re going to say it’s too expensive for us to reconsider his situation? That’s ridiculous,” Farley said.

Both sides say very few people are found not guilty by reason of insanity for any type of crime, much less murder. And among them, Garcia’s case is unusual because of the speed with which it has returned to court.

McGee said his office has received a preliminary report from Patton State Hospital on Garcia’s condition, and Storch asked for an updated report in time for Wednesday’s hearing. McGee said confidentiality laws preclude him from disclosing the contents of the report, but he conceded it is “very unlikely” that Garcia will be found sane.

However, that does little to ease the minds of prosecutors who handle such cases, McGee said. A defendant who claims his sanity has been restored is entitled to a jury trial on the issue, and there is always a concern that the panel will place too much stock in the opinion of a psychiatrist.

It also is risky to judge whether a person is still a danger to society, McGee noted.

“The ability to really predict future human behavior can hardly be called a science,” he said.