Lorenzo Mays, who is intellectually disabled, spent years lost in a criminal justice system in California that too often fails people with developmental disabilities and mental illness.
But challenges persisted. In January 2010, he arrived in Sacramento for what was supposed to be a brief visit. Back home in Tennessee,
The unit Mays was held in was a non-punishment unit designed to separate out inmates who were often “assaultive and hard to manage,” according to an emailed statement from Sacramento County’s sheriff’s spokesman Amar Gandhi. Gandhi noted that the classification of these individuals “was sometimes made using old and stale information” and that the county is working to reduce the numbers of individuals held there.
In all her years visiting the jail, she said, she had never seen anyone become “so invisible throughout the entire system for so many years.”Nearly a third of people in California jails have a mental illness, a figure that has leapt over the past decade, according to Despite that, Emi McLean, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said the situation is worse than in 2019.
Hiren Patel, chief counsel of the Department of Developmental Services, said Carr’s case is “another unicorn” and “even more complicated than Mr. Mays’ case.” Some point to his defense attorneys. Others call out Alta Regional Center and the Department of Developmental Services. Still others criticize the Sacramento district attorney or the local court system for failing to adhere to timelines dictated by the law.Attorney Aaron Fischer,Patel, of the Department of Developmental Services, said Mays’ case was complicated by a number of factors: Mays had moved recently to California from out of state and was not on the radar of the regional center.
The jury deadlocked Nov. 20, 2015, according to the court record; the judge declared a mistrial. The district attorney requested a new jury trial. Over the years, according to letters obtained by CalMatters, Kitt developed serious reservations about Mays’ case. Patel, of the Department of Developmental Services, said the department has made changes in the years since Mays’ arrest that specifically affect people with developmental disabilities who are found incompetent.
The Department of State Hospitals is also tackling the issue. Last year, the California Health & Human Services Agency and the Department of State Hospitals convened a work group, which issuedto the backlog. Many of the proposed solutions echoed those in the State Justice Institute report. Michael Salmaggi, a Los Angeles public defender who represents people with intellectual disabilities, said the county has moved toward consolidating competency hearings under a few trained judges in a dedicated mental health court. Before that, when any criminal court could oversee competency, he said, many judges were unfamiliar with the law and specific timelines. He noted that jury trials to determine competency are “almost unheard of” in the county.
Lorenzo Mays, who had a series of private, conflict attorneys, wouldn’t have qualified for any of them.In fall 2018, Lorenzo Mays was still in jail. A proposed second jury trial to determine his competency had been postponed. The regional center and the Department of Developmental Services were increasingly raising concerns about how long he had spent in jail.“You put a bird in a cage, you got to let him out sometime, or he’ll die,” he told CalMatters.
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