Sallie
Supreme Court Allows Defendant's Forced Medication
Tue Jun 17 00:12:53 2003
208.152.73.134

Supreme Court Allows Defendant's Forced Medication
June 16, 2003

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A divided U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruled on Monday that the government may force defendants to take anti-psychotic medicine to make them competent to stand trial on serious criminal charges, but only under certain limited circumstances.

By a 6-3 vote, the court allowed forced medication if the treatment was medically appropriate, substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the trial's fairness, necessary to further important governmental trial-related interests and less intrusive alternatives were unavailable.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer (news - web sites) said the standard would permit forced medication solely to make defendants competent to stand trial in certain instances, but that the instances may be rare.

The court ordered more proceedings in the case, which involved Dr. Charles Sell, a dentist from a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. He was charged in 1997, along with his wife, for Medicaid and insurance fraud.

Government and defense psychologists diagnosed him as suffering from "delusional disorder, persecutory type." He was found to be suffering from mental illness that made him incompetent to stand trial.

Sell has been held in a mental health facility at a federal prison while awaiting trial. A U.S. appeals court upheld a federal judge's decision that Sell could be medicated against his will so he can stand trial.

Breyer said the appeals court was wrong in approving forced medication solely to render Sell competent to stand trial.

In setting aside the appeals court's ruling, Breyer said the appeals court did not find that the required circumstances existed in this case.

Civil liberties groups, an organization representing criminal defense lawyers and an association of physicians and surgeons all supported Sell. The American Psychiatric Association supported the federal government.

According to the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites), there recently have been 59 criminal defendants forced to take antipsychotic medication.

In a recent 12-month period, 80 percent of 285 defendants found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial voluntarily accepted medication. Of the remaining 59 who were treated against their will, many of them did not seek judicial review, the department said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20030616/ts_nm/court_competency_dc

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They have held Dr. Sell, DDS for 7 years without a trial much of it in solitary confinement as a means of psychological torture,
(5 years longer than if he had gone to trial and been found guilty), after falsely charging him with Medicaid fraud, and forcibly drugged him, because he caught the government in lies as by evidence of forensic findings of dental work obtained from his post-mortems on Waco victims. According to John Stadtmiller a talk show host on Genesis this morning as a guest on Alex Jones Show www.infowars.com  - "Dr. Sell also had pictures of the FEDS setting fire to Waco." Obviously, they had to shut him up, so now they are prosecuting him Soviet Style as they often did to entire families during the cold war, under the premise there must be something wrong with anyone who would disagree with the state.

"Government and defense psychologists diagnosed him as suffering from "delusional disorder, persecutory type." He was found to be suffering from mental illness that made him incompetent to stand trial." In a radio interview a couple of years ago, his attorney said, he was very intelligent, articulate, alert, oriented, and appropriate -- not out of touch with reality. Your not delusional if you have proof, and obviously he was persecutory to those who illegally took away his freedom -- I would too! Since he had the evidence, there's no way they would let him expose those who were culpable if brought into the light of the court room. Even though upholding the drugging, both the district and appellate courts admitted that Dr. Sell posed no danger to himself or any others. He was even denied writing materials to contact his attorney.

Many of these drugs have life threatening side effects and known to make people psychotic in documented law suits won by the victims relatives, often after the victims have committed suicide or homicide.

This is a violation of his constitutional rights under USC Title 28, section 42 which should supercede the Supreme Court finding, and I'm sure his attorney filed a Federal Declaratory and Injunctive Relief early on -- There were motions filed too numerous to mention. See the Supreme Court Website: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

The ACLU was involved as well Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) www.aapsonline.org / "It's a shocking, inhumane decision. Now, all the government needs are allegations and a cooperative psychiatrist to forcibly drug any citizen," said Andrew Schlafly, General Counsel for the AAPS. That group filed an amicus brief opposing the government drugging.

Last March, In the Motion for Rehearing, AAPS argued:

"The Decision holds that merely by alleging fraud, the State may inject mind-altering drugs into a prisoner against his will, based on government testimony. The panel majority even rejected any limits on the type or quantity of the drugs injected, and implicitly allowed drugs that have not been fully tested and approved for the specific purpose.

"Because the Decision is at odds with Supreme Court holdings, adherence to Rule of Law requires a rehearing en banc."

Court documents filed by the ACLU echo those arguments:

"The Panel's holding that an intermediate level of scrutiny is required for the government to administer involuntarily antipsychotic medication for the sole purpose of rendering a non-dangerous pretrial detainee competent to stand trial conflicts with the decisions of other Courts of Appeals that strict scrutiny is required to satisfy a non- dangerous pretrial detainee's due process rights.

"The Panel's opinion fails to determine if the government's interest is compelling before applying its balancing test, and fails to acknowledge the fundamental liberty status that the Supreme Court has granted to non-dangerous people to be free from involuntary medication by the government."

Mr. Schlafly says that AAPS will continue efforts to overturn the decision, and have an article on today verdict on their website www.aapsonline.org / Supreme Court rules: AAPS helps overturn forced drugging - 6/16/03

All these facts constitute CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT. What is happening to Dr. Sell should SCARE THE HELL out of EVERY AMERICAN! The fact that some one could be imprisoned for 7 years without benefit of his day in Court is scary enough! But for the highest court in the country to say it is OK to medicate ANY ONE against their will is repulsive, disgusting and beyond measure! He was not even charged with a violent crime. This one story alone should be sufficient enough to awaken every American to the tyranny in our midst. This decision today proves your courts have NO JUSTICE in America! YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS! We have a bought and paid for US Supreme Court which selected our president in the tying vote cast by Justice Sandra Day O'Conner (CFR), so what else can we expect -- certainly not justice. With the new ruling today they could keep Dr. Sell a lifetime.
Welcome to the Fourth Reich!
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ALEX JONES
http://www.infowars.com

APFN WHY WACO PAGES AND LINKS:
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• Supreme Court Upholds Right to Refuse Mind-Altering Drugs — Richard Glen Boire, J.D, Tue Jun 17 01:08
• DOCTORS WIN SUPREME COURT DECISION TO HALT FORCED DRUGGING — AAPS, Tue Jun 17 01:01