photo by: Mike Yoder/Journal-World File Photo

The Douglas County Jail is shown in this file photo from February 2015.

Over the past several years, an inmate in the Douglas County Jail suffered from significant mental health issues that would disrupt his ability to defend himself in court, prolonging his case for years.

Once it was all said and done, the man spent six years in the county jail before he was convicted. That case resulted in a sentence of 16 months — less than a quarter of the amount of time he had been incarcerated.

It’s a case that Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister said encapsulates the “dark underbelly” of the state’s criminal justice system, which he believes fails to properly account for the mental health of those who are held in jail prior to conviction.

That inmate, whom Armbrister did not name when speaking to the Journal-World on Friday, was found incompetent to stand trial because of significant mental illness. His struggles with his condition — and the time it took to get him the treatment he needed to finally participate in the legal process — kept him behind bars for years before he was convicted.

“He epitomizes the failures within the system,” Armbrister said. “It was a sad, dark underbelly we all saw and didn’t get the attention at the state level that it should. He was a perfect example of how the system is not set up for somebody like him.”

A large part of the reason that his case took so long was a significant backlog of inmates in Kansas ordered to receive mental health treatment at the Larned State Hospital in Pawnee County. Many inmates who struggle with mental health are determined by Kansas courts to be unable to stand trial and must receive treatment at the state hospital to be returned to competency, despite a lack of bed space in the facility.

The result is that many inmates spend months, if not years, behind bars even though they’ve not been convicted of a crime.

Armbrister said he believes more must be done on the state level to address this problem.

“I firmly believe the state of Kansas needs to build another state hospital, somewhere in the (Kansas City) metro area,” he said. “Larned is basically being swamped.”

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The hospital’s backlog is an issue that affects not only Douglas County, but the state as a whole.

Locally, there are 10 inmates in the Douglas County Jail who have been ordered to receive treatment at the state hospital and are waiting to go there, said George Diepenbrock, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office. Their criminal cases have been put on pause until they can receive that treatment.

Overall, the state hospital’s wait list includes 157 male inmates and 14 female inmates, according to data provided by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, which oversees the hospital. For the male inmates, the average wait time is 171 days — or close to six months — KDADS spokeswoman Cara Sloan-Ramos told the Journal-World in an email.

But Sloan-Ramos said the state hospital is working to provide mobile services for competency treatment. She said the hospital is specifically working with Sedgwick and Shawnee counties — home to Wichita and Topeka, respectively — to identify offenders who meet criteria to receive services in a jail setting rather than the state hospital.

Whether that is an option that could help Douglas County inmates remains to be seen. Diepenbrock said this past week that the Douglas County inmate who was highest on the hospital’s wait list was 19th in line. That inmate, who was ordered to the hospital on Oct. 26, 2020, has been on the wait list for almost a full year, he said.

Meanwhile, one of the most recent inmates ordered to receive treatment at the hospital, Robert Earl Davis, likely won’t get treatment at the hospital for another year, his attorney Dakota Loomis said in court earlier this month.

Davis is accused of first-degree murder in the death of Daniel Evan Brooks, 66, of Lawrence. On Aug. 18, Brooks was stabbed in the parking lot of the Dillons grocery store at 1015 W. 23rd St.; he was pronounced dead at the scene. His dog, Bear, was also stabbed in the incident, but later recovered.

Currently, Davis is incapable of participating in his defense against the charges because he suffers from serious mental illness. During a recent competency hearing, Judge Kay Huff said a mental health evaluator found that Davis would not speak to her and that he would talk to himself while showing signs of “active psychotic features.” Davis also refused to leave his cell to appear at the hearing.

Before the case against Davis can continue, he must regain competency, allowing him to participate in his own defense, which is part of his constitutional right to a fair trial. After Huff’s ruling, Loomis said in court that he believed the long wait list meant Davis could be waiting in Douglas County for about a year.

Prosecutors in these kinds of cases don’t have many options or much involvement in what happens after a defendant is determined to be incompetent. Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez told the Journal-World that her office recognizes there is a significant issue in the criminal justice system because of the backlog, but not much can be done on her end.

She said the backlog is a longstanding problem in the state that “absolutely negatively impacts the rights” of inmates. She said one of the only options her office has is dismissing a case, which often is not appropriate.

“Short of dismissing the case, prosecutors have no options when the accused’s competency is at issue,” Valdez said in a statement provided to the Journal-World. “But public safety concerns most often make outright dismissal inappropriate. Community safety should never be at odds with basic human rights, such as the access to mental health assessment and treatment.”

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Finding a solution could be difficult, and it might require the state government to make a major financial investment.

Individuals on the wait list cannot receive the mental health treatment they need just anywhere. While the Douglas County Jail provides mental health services to the inmates in its custody, it does not have the legal authority to force treatment like the state hospital does, Armbrister said.

That means some inmates may receive treatment at the state hospital, begin taking medications that help them regain competency, then stop taking the medications when they return to the jail. The jail staff would then have no recourse to make sure the inmate continues to take the medication.

For instance, the man who sat in jail for six years before he was convicted was ordered to Larned several times before he could remain competent long enough to reach a resolution in his case. Armbrister said he would be treated at the hospital, then come back to Douglas County and refuse to take his medication, which led to him again being found incompetent and starting the process all over again.

“All we can do is present it to them, ask them to take it and tell them why it’s best for them,” Armbrister said. “But if they refuse it, that’s it.”

Additionally, there seem to be no other places for the judges to consider sending the inmates. Douglas County Chief Judge James McCabria said competency issues are laid out in state law and the court is only aware of Larned as a suitable mental health facility.

With that in mind, Armbrister said he believes Kansas needs to ante up state funding for another hospital in the northeastern part of the state to provide more bed space for inmates suffering from mental health issues. However, he said he knows Larned State Hospital is also facing staffing issues, just like many other agencies involved in criminal justice.

He said the issue is similar to a grocery store that has customers lining up at the register. When that happens, the store will have an employee open another register to begin checking people out.

But that hasn’t happened yet in mental health services for inmates, Armbrister said.

“For whatever reason, the state has not even begun a discussion on creating another facility anywhere, much less on this side of the state,” he said. “That’s one of the things I’m very (supportive of), is getting another facility to help ease everybody’s pain.”