The Too Little, Too Late Debate

Despite previous legislative efforts to amend California’s mental-health laws, “there has been a growing recognition that waiting for danger is just too late, and a growing recognition that the problem is getting worse,” says Assemblywoman Helen Thomson, D-Davis, one of California’s most vocal reform proponents.

The first result of the reform movement, AB 1424, which allows families to introduce a history of mental illness when police are considering whether to take a patient to emergency services, took effect this Jan. 1. The more comprehensive reform bill, AB 1421, which would mandate and pay for court-ordered outpatient treatment after patients such as West are released from a hospital, passed the Assembly but did not come up for a vote in the Senate.

Critics say the need to pass that bill is long overdue. Tony Capozzola, one of West’s defense attorneys, says the lack of reform has turned California into an “open-air asylum.”

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, whom critics blame for the lack of Senate action on mental-health reform, says the Senate will deal with the issue this session when an amended version of AB 1421 will be heard in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. “It’s a serious problem, and we intend to deal with it in a serious way,” Burton says. “But we have to balance the patient’s rights against the safety of society.”

Dwight Bergquist, West’s last therapist before the killing, says that what happened to West that night more than 20 months ago should serve as a warning. “In California you have the right to act crazy and destroy your life, and Marie Elise exercised that right,” he says. “Unfortunately, she killed someone at the same time.”