Limitations of constitutional protections in Jackson v. Indiana pertaining to charges with no statute of limitations.

There has been a long-standing link between the civil and criminal commitment procedures for individuals found incompetent to stand trial (IST). In the criminal system, when restoration of competency fails to be realized in a reasonable time, the civil commitment process becomes the default system for commitment. While there have been recent calls for improved mechanisms for predicting competence restorability, there has been little attention paid to individuals who can oscillate indefinitely between commitment in both the criminal and civil systems. We provide an example of one such case where an individual falls into the legal space that sits outside of the judicial guidance outlined in the landmark case Jackson v. Indiana. This review of Oregon public documents surrounding an ongoing murder case highlights the potential for indefinite detention of individuals who have been charged with serious crimes that do not have a statute of limitations, who are unlikely to be restored to competency to stand trial, and who are inconsistently found to be dangerous under civil commitment standards.

A model treatment refusal procedure for defendants found incompetent to stand trial in the ninth circuit.

Pretrial detainees have a constitutionally protected right to refuse medical treatment in most circumstances; however, individuals found incompetent to stand trial (IST) due to a mental disorder can be treated involuntarily by clinicians who adhere to careful medical and legal procedures. The process of involuntary treatment of IST pretrial detainees begins with categorization into particular legal and medical groups. These different categories affect the individual's access to treatment. In this article, we review the relevant case law for the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit and place the medical-legal debate regarding these procedures in the context of recent cases. To address the medical-legal disjunction, we propose and discuss a model for managing treatment refusal in pretrial detainees found IST.