Mentally ill offender to stay in treatment program officials say he cannot understand

AUSTIN - The Texas Civil Commitment Office will create a special mental health treatment program for one man at a West Texas lockup after losing a fight with the state health department over which agency should house and treat a felon it says is too ill to benefit from - or even understand - the sex offender treatment he has been ordered to undergo.

Officials confirmed Wednesday that Devern Williams Jr., 65, will not be moved from a state-run treatment center for sex predators, as a Conroe judge had ordered in January, after top officials from the Texas Department of State Health Services argued that a state hospital was not the proper place for him.

Instead, the health agency has signed a $629,850 contract with the private company that operates the sex-offender center in Littlefield, northwest of Lubbock, to provide "psychiatric treatment, medication and counseling specifically designed for (Williams') psychiatric needs." Officials said while that funding covers mental health services for the approximately 300 offenders at the center, Williams is to receive the higher level of care provided at state hospitals.

Officials stressed that Williams will have to receive higher care or his case could land back in court.

It was a first for the state's civil commitment program for violent sex offenders that underwent sweeping reforms ordered by the Legislature last year after a Houston Chronicle investigation revealed a legal and operational mess, including the fact that many mentally ill offenders in the program could neither understand nor be expected to complete the treatment into which they had been ordered.

Marsha McLane, executive director of the civil commitment agency, which oversees the program and had pushed to have Williams removed to a state mental hospital, declined comment on a court order signed last Friday by state District Judge H.D. Black to let Williams stay at the Littlefield facility.

State Department of Health Services spokeswoman Carrie Williams, citing confidentiality laws, declined to discuss specifics of Williams' case but said "dangerousness as a result of a person's mental illness is taken into consideration during the evaluation process for involuntary admission" into a state hospital.

Created in 1999, Texas' civil commitment program was designed to keep felons convicted of two or more violent sex crimes, who were deemed to be a continuing danger to society, in state custody after they completed their prison terms until they completed what was supposed to be an intensive behavior-modification program.

Until last year, none of the more than 350 men ordered into the civil commitment program had graduated and been released. More than half were sent back to prison for violations of program rules, prompting numerous lawsuits and complaints that the program was violating the offenders' constitutional rights.

Under reforms approved by the Texas Legislature last year, those committed to the program were to undergo a multitiered in-patient treatment program that allows them to progress to increasing levels of freedom toward an eventual release back into the community under supervision.

Critics say it is unclear whether the arrangement set up for Williams would resolve legal questions that continue to plague the controversial civil commitment program.

"The state for so many years has ignored the fact that many of these men don't need to be in this program, because they have no ability to understand it or benefit from the treatment," said Houston defense lawyer Nancy Bunin, who has represented civil commitment offenders. "Establishing a treatment person for one person, even if it proves effective, isn't going to solve the larger legal problems here."

Whitmire's doubts

State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who authored the reforms of the civil commitment program last year, including a mandate that state health services officials take custody of mentally ill offenders, questioned why a state mental hospital was not an option.

"This man obviously needs to be confined, but is Littlefield the proper place for the state to try to restore his competency, so he can understand the treatment program there?" he asked. "The intent of the legislation was for DSHS to do that in a state hospital. This issue of mentally incapacitated people in this program is going to be a continuing challenge that we may have to revisit next legislative session."

According to an appellate court order, Williams, who was convicted on the first of three rape charges in 1970, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and an antisocial personality disorder, and was so mentally ill that he was unable to participate in sex-offender or substance-abuse treatment while in prison. At one point, records show, he was accused of choking and raping another convict.

After eight years in the civil commitment program, officials say Williams made no measurable progress, and therapists reported that he had little or no ability to understand the program.

Last fall, Black ordered Williams, who was being reviewed for transfer to the newly opened Littlefield unit, to undergo a full psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he would benefit from continued sex-offender treatment in the program.

At a Jan. 20 hearing to review the report, Black ordered Williams placed in a state mental hospital "until such time (as) his mental illness no longer prevents him from effectively participating in and benefitting from sex offender treatment."

Tense meetings

The Department of State Health Services still had not taken custody of Williams more than a month later, prompting a complaint from an assistant attorney general representing the civil commitment agency that DSHS had not provided inpatient psychiatric services to Williams as Black had ordered and had not designated a facility where he could be transferred.

In response, an assistant attorney general representing DSHS insisted that "no legally sufficient grounds support the admission of Mr. Williams to a state mental hospital" and that he "did not meet civil-commitment criteria for involuntary inpatient treatment."

Other court filings show DSHS officials who evaluated Williams determined he "posed no risk to himself or others." Despite that, civil commitment officials stood firm in support of a transfer to a state hospital, mostly because mental health treatment at Littlefield has been limited by a lack of qualified professionals at its remote location. DSHS was just as adamant it would not take him.

Last week, in meetings that officials described as so tense that Gov. Greg Abbott's office had to weigh in at one point, the civil commitment agency was told to accept that Williams be provided full psychiatric services at Littlefield.

'Not yet fixed'

Nicolas Hughes, a Houston lawyer and public defender who has represented several men in the program, said that while providing appropriate levels of mental-health services at Littlefield could benefit Williams, "I can guarantee you that Devern Williams is not the only person at Littlefield with serious mental issues that keep them from participating in the program.

"The state has to provide these services because this is now an inpatient program," he said. "Why is it that the state is just now dealing with this, recognizing that many of these men have serious mental issues? They've been running this program for 15 years. What this shows is that this program is not yet fixed."