Court Considers Forced Medication Case

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Missouri dentist Charles Sell sees imaginary leopards, believes the FBI is trying to kill him and wants to go into combat.

The Supreme Court will be considering his case Monday, bringing into question whether the 53-year-old can be forced to take anti-psychotic drugs to make him well enough to stand trial on insurance fraud charges.

His case asks the high court to balance the government's interest in punishing nonviolent crime with a person's constitutional right to control his or her body.

Sell's case raises questions that could apply more broadly to, for example, government programs requiring vaccinations against anthrax or school mandates that children with hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder take drugs to remain in class.

The justices were hearing arguments Monday in a follow-up to a 1992 court ruling that defendants can be forced to take drugs only if it is medically appropriate.

No one disputes that Sell, of suburban St. Louis, is mentally ill and too unstable to stand trial. There is disagreement over whether medicines will help him, and whether he is dangerous. He currently resides in a psychiatric unit.

The Bush administration argues that hundreds of federal defendants a year are medicated, and that most become competent to stand trial. Most take the drugs willingly. In a recent 12-month period, 59 people were medicated against their wishes and about three-fourths were restored to competency, the administration told the court.

Sell and his wife are accused of submitting bogus claims to Medicaid and private insurance companies for dental services. Sell was later charged with conspiring and attempting to kill a witness - a former worker in his office - and the FBI agent who arrested him.

He has spent more than four years in a prison hospital as his lawyers fought over his drugging, more jail time than he would receive if convicted of the fraud crimes. He has been diagnosed with a delusional disorder.

Some were surprised when the Supreme Court announced last fall it would hear Sell's case. The justices refused to take up the subject in 2001 in the appeal of Russell Eugene Weston, a schizophrenic charged with killing two U.S. Capitol police officers in 1998.

The court signaled Friday that there may be problems with the Sell case. It asked both sides to prepare arguments about whether the case was properly appealed.

The case has attracted the attention of medical organizations and civil rights groups.

Peter Joy, a professor at Washington University School of Law who filed a brief on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the powerful drugs Sell would be given can cause serious side effects and potentially death.

"It shocks my conscience to think we might risk putting someone to death prior to trying them on nonviolent charges," he said.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said there's an interest to victims and society in putting defendants on trial. "The criminal justice system makes all kinds of intrusion on people's privacy. It locks people up, searches their houses, searches their bodies," he said.

Mark N. Light, one of Sell's lawyers, said the case will resolve "whether American citizens have a fundamental right to avoid being drugged against their will simply because they've been charged with a crime."

...whether the 53-year-old can be forced to take anti-psychotic drugs to make him well enough to stand trial on insurance fraud charges.

Insurance fraud?! I could maybe, maybe, understand if he were accused of murder, rape, etc.

IMO, there's something just plain wrong with drugging another person against his/her will. I'd bet he will be appealing his conviction (we all know once the justice machine of govt. is turned against a person, there is no escape) baised on the using of 'mind-altering' drugs. This will drag out for a few more years, with the taxpayers footing the bill for an overzelious prosecutor.

Cheeze louise! A person does not have a "Constitutional right" to their body in so far as any action, or lack of action, would adverse effect those around him.

It doesn't effect me one way or the other of John Doe get's his ears pierced or his hair dyed orange. On the other hand it does effect me, and everyone else, if TB positive John Doe refuses medication b/c he claims a "Constitutional right" to his own body...well, there you cross the line.

This was driven home by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. at the turn of the last century agreed with the majority of the Court in its decision to permit forced steralization of retarded people.

The case had to do with three generations in one family of "idoits" (in the legal sense, person w/ IQ's between 60-85 I believe) who kept having idoitic(retarded) babies and still more babies, till at last all three generations had become a terrible burden on the community. "Three generations of idoits," declared Holmes for the Court, "are enough."

IOW, individual "rights" do not,and should not, trump the common rights of all.

Oh, I like this one.

Who determines that the drug is effective in making the defendant "normal enough" to stand trial? If he can't stand trial without the drug, it is because he is insane? I bet he didn't have the drug when he commited the fraud and conspiracy, so he must have been insane then, too.

He should take the drug, say he's all better, and then use that history for a temporary insanity defense!

Oh, and aside from the leopards, the rest is not delusional.

I heard this on C-Span radio driving into work today. C-Span was actually reading from an article in the Christian Science Monitor; it sounded like that one was a bit more in depth. Anyway, for me, this case is a tough one. On one hand, we can't say, carte blanche, that someone should be forced to medicate, simply because such a decision might set a precident that would enable schools to forcibly medicate children, if they are a "problem child", or, on a broader level, it could even empower the gov't to forcibly medicate anyone who is considered to be not of "sound mind".

On the other hand though, we can't say that there's never a case to forcibly medicate someone. As yankeedame said on this thread, if someone has TB, they should be forced to take antibiotics, as TB is a contageous disease. Clearly there's a social implication there, where the needs of society outwiegh the needs for personal privacy.

I guess that's what it comes down to really, is comprimise (as with many things in life). I certainly hope that in whatever the SC decides in this particular case, they write into their decision, assuming it's a decision in favor of the plantiffs, this case should NOT be used as a precident to force medication on anyone, for any reason, for example the ritalin/"problem child" hypothetical I mentioned earlier, and also the case of the Christian Scientists, who believe no medical intervention should be preformed. While I disagree with that on a religious level, I think it'd be a terribly slippery slope to allow the infringement of personal religious freedom for the sake of "societal concerns".

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