A federal court has refused to help a man who was arrested, essentially, for being sick.
Officials with the Rutherford Institute had brought a case against government officials in Waynesboro, Virginia, the Valley Community Services Board and a mental health screener for detaining Gordon Goines, 37, on the grounds he was having mental health issues.
But there were no mental health issues at all, Rutherford reported. The man's only ailment was a neurological condition similar to multiple sclerosis which causes him to occasionally have slurred speech and an unsteady walk.
He ended up being held in custody for several days for being "mentally ill and dangerous" when it later was revealed in a hearing that "Goines had no mental illness and should not have been confined," Rutherford reported on Friday.
A case brought on his behalf for an illegal detention, however, was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, which "granted a motion [for dismissal] filed by police officers, the Valley Community Services Board and one of its mental health screeners."
The court found the police didn't violate the law by taking a sane, if not fully healthy, man into custody on suspicion of mental health issues.
Rutherford officials had argued that the defendants violated clearly established law protecting citizens from "unjustified mental-health seizures."
"By giving government officials the power to declare individuals mentally ill and detain them against their will without first ensuring that they are actually trained to identify such illness, the government has opened the door to a system in which involuntary detentions can be used to make people disappear," said John Whitehead, chief of the Institute.
"Indeed, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally," Whitehead said.
Goines' affliction is cerebellar ataxia, and as a result he "has difficulty at times with his balance, causing him to walk unsteadily, speaks slowly and with a slur and has problems with fine motor skills."
But he has no cognitive impairment and is of above-average intelligence, the report from Rutherford noted.
The court's ruling granted qualified immunity to the officers and others who "wrongfully arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table" Goines.
He was locked up for five days in a mental health hospital against his will – and with no access to family and friends, Rutherford reported.
The Fourth Amendment lawsuit explained that it was on May 15, 2014, when Goines had difficulty with his cable service. He called the company, and a technician told him a neighbor had spliced into his service, suggesting Goines call police.
He walked across the street to the Waynesboro Police Department to report the theft, and one responding officer said Goines was having "mental-health issues."
The officers asked him if he wanted to talk to someone, and Goines, thinking they meant about the cable theft, agreed.
Instead of addressing the theft, the officers handcuffed him and took him to the Augusta County Medical Center, where he was interviewed by a screener who was not a licensed medical professional, clinical psychologist or social worker.
He then was taken to the Crossroads Mental Health Center where he was held until a later hearing found he had no mental illness.
WND reported earlier that the lawsuit named the Valley Community Services Board, VCSB "intake clinician" Jenna Rhodes and police officers David Shaw, Robert Dean and D.L. Williams as defendants.
The complaint noted, "The impacts of cerebellar ataxia are purely physiological. The disorder does not affect Goines' cognitive functioning."
It charges that the officers "ignored or did not take the time to understand Goines' complaint."
"At the time of the seizure, transportation and detention of Goines, none of the defendants had probable cause to believe that Goines had committed any crime, nor did any defendant have probable cause to believe that Goines was a danger to himself or others, nor did any defendant have any other legitimate lawful basis to seize, arrest or detain him," the complaint stated.
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