05 Oct Attorney Iris Eytan highlights man’s plight in U.S. District Court
Why Mentally Ill Colorado Man Has Spent Eight Months in Jail for Spitting
BY MICHAEL ROBERTS FOR WESTWORD.COM
Oct 5, 2018
A mentally ill Colorado man has been in jail since February because he spit on a police officer. As a result, he hasn’t received restorative treatment for his condition in eight months, with no end in sight.
Attorney Iris Eytan highlighted the man’s plight during a September 28 hearing in U.S. District Court over a lawsuit filed against Reggie Bicha, the Colorado Department of Human Services’ executive director, and Ronald Hale, superintendent of the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo, over what has become the routine warehousing of untreated mentally ill individuals in local jails for months.
In response, Eytan says the deputy attorney general representing Bicha’s department “asserted that pointing this out wasn’t relevant, because the hearing was really about the contract we’d signed and the meaning of it, not the actual people who are suffering because of what we feel is breach of contract.”
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(photo courtesy of westword.com)