The Cutler-Cawley Bill

Last week, as reports of shocking conditions at the Bridgewater State Hospital were making the headlines, a special Massachusetts legislative commission filed a bill which create a new mental health code for the state. The bill should be passed.

The new legislation, which was filed by Senator Leslie B. Cutler (R-Needham) and Rep. Robert L. Cawley (D-West Roxbury), the co-chairmen of the special commission, is designed to meet the test of last February's United States Supreme Court decision in Boxtrom v. Herald.

At that time the court ruled that a convicted person could not be incarcerated for a time longer than his sentence merely because a physician certifies him "violent and dangerous." Under the Cutler-Cawley bill a person in a mental institution whose sentence has expired would be entitled to a discharge hearing in court.

Should the hearing find the person still "mentally ill" he could be retained in an institution but the Commonwealth would be required to review the commitment within six months and once a year thereafter.

If the person had not yet been tried he could also be entitled to a hearing on his competency to stand trial. Should he be found competent and then found guilty any time previously spent in a mental institution would be subtracted from his sentence.

At present one ward of the Bridgewater State Hospital contains men who have been in the hospital for as long as 50 years after having been committed for crimes as small as vagrency.

The Cutler-Cawley bill also provides for a Division of Mental Health within the attorney-general's office. This division would advise all of the state's mental patients of their legal rights and assist them in the preparation of petitions and writs. Since the attorney general is also the state's official prosecutor, some people believe that the mental health lawyers should be under the control of the Massachusetts Defenders Committee, the agency of Supreme Judicial Court charged with the defense of the indigent. This comparatively minor point should not be allowed to endanger the legislation. At present the Massachusetts Bar Association's Committee on Criminal Law is reviewing the bill and they perhaps will be able to resolve this problem.

The General Court would be wise to listen to the Bar Association on the bill but it shouldn't wait until summer, when many members are absent, tired, or otherwise disinterested, before considering this legislation. The Commonwealth, as Rep. Cawley noted when announcing the bill, has a deep obligation to see that civil rights of all of its citizens are protected.