Mental Disabilities Law Issues
| Jurisdiction | Colorado,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 6 No. 7 Pg. 1158 |
| Pages | 1158 |
| Publication year | 1977 |
1977, July, Pg. 1158. Mental Disabilities Law Issues
This column is prepared by the Colorado Bar Association's Office for the Mentally Disabled. The purpose of the column is to acquaint lawyers with new developments in mental disabilities law. The Mental Health Law Project seeks to represent indigent individuals who are involved in the civil commitment process, by negotiation and by court hearings. The Project also engages in community and legislative efforts, and test case litigation designed to further the interests of the clientele.
The Mental Health Law Project has been supported through a grant to the ABA Fund for Public Education by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and was awarded by the ABA Commission on the Mentally Disabled. The provision of financial and technical support for the project does not necessarily indicate their concurrence with the statements contained in this or future columns.
From a broad constitutional perspective, the present Colorado civil commitment statute represents a major improvement over all previous statutes, in theory and in practice. It is the first Colorado commitment statute in which the individual is faced not with indefinite incarceration and loss of civil rights, but with finite periods of confinement with access to the courts granted at all times. Upon closer analysis of the statute, however, there remain certain areas of questionable constitutional validity in need of revision and/or clarification. Two such areas are the lack of a provision in the statute for a preliminary hearing and the lack of a provision for a mandatory review of the decision to commit.
The initial hours of an involuntary detention pursuant to a civil commitment statute can be the most frightening from the individual's point of view; with having "done nothing wrong," he/she is forcibly removed from his/her environment and required to submit to treatment, which oftentimes includes the administration of psychotropic medication.
Unfortunately, the presence of an attorney during this 72-hour evaluation period, although perhaps reassuring, cannot secure a release for the individual, because the Colorado statute in its present form does not permit the individual access to a court or an administrative
To continue reading
Request your trial