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"Title 43A, the Oklahoma Mental Health Code, comes close to, if not actually reaching, an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder. When the Mental Health Court commonly ignores even the due process provisions of this bigoted law, there is no practical difference.
According to one source, http://www.legal-explanations.com/definitions/bill-of-attainder.htm, the definition of Bill of Attainder is:
“(n) Bill Of Attainder is a legislative Act which declares a person or group as guilty of any crime, there by ordering punishment to them, without allowing them a chance to represent their cause or an unbiased trial to determine whether they are guilty. Many constitutions prohibit enacting of such Acts. This was practiced by English monarchies during eighteenth century.”
It is said that a criminal is convicted for only one of every ten criminal acts. Partly because the criminal most often goes undiscovered, and partly because in every trial, “It is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted.” This is the deal that gang-bangers, drug dealers, murderers and child molesters get. It doesn’t matter what people fear they might do, if they can’t prove criminals have actually done it. At least for the first time, in the case of child molesters. It doesn’t matter what a criminal might be thinking of doing in the future, because the criminal cannot be compelled to testify against himself.
Yet thirty years ago, medical and legal studies showed that the “experts” could predict the future likelihood of a person with mental illness committing violence only about one time in three; less than one time in two at best. A person with mental illness may be detained and examined on the mere hearsay or unsworn accusation of threat, even a false one. A person with mental illness can be examined by “experts” for fault without a trial, with the intent of inducing or coercing self-incrimination, without even a lawyer present. The local Mental Health Court currently accepts any recommendation the local “experts” give, without making sure that the accused person with mental illness has adequate and legally-mandated information on legal and constitutional rights, the opportunity to plead his or her case, or to call and examine witnesses. Even for the two times out of three that the “experts” are wrong, or have even artificially inflated mental health evaluations in aid of commitment, once the commitment has taken place, the accused is required to prove his or her thoughts are clean of all socially unacceptable taint. Otherwise the punishment and violation of civil liberties continues indefinitely, without any fixed term.
Why do violent criminals get so much better treatment in the law and courts than people with mental illnesses, who are merely accused of merely thinking of committing acts of violence? Who are merely accused of merely inducing a “reasonable fear” of threat in another person? Why are people with mental illnesses encouraged to incriminate themselves? Allegedly, it is for the benefit of people with mental illness and the safety of society. Yet if you ask those responsible to prove or demonstrate conclusively that, in spite of the vast majority of evidence to the contrary, people with mental illnesses actually benefit from this kind of vile, discriminatory treatment, or that society is actually safer, they can only fall back on the assertions that they know so because they have titles before and letters after their names.
And then there is the race issue. Most black people with such accusations against them get sent to jail. But you can’t examine black people without lawyers, and convict for their thoughts; there are civil rights laws against it. From what I’ve seen, the mental health facility inmates are predominately white. So one could say that the Oklahoma Mental Health Code is just a Bill of Jim Crow Attainder for white people. A way to exercise righteous bigotry on someone else, now that doing so to women and racial minorities is no longer legally or politically correct. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma, which is in charge of supervising the Mental Health Court in this mess, should be ashamed of itself for the extralegal violations of constitutional rights and civil liberties it has allowed to occur under the color of law. "
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