Inside New Mexico’s first diversion program for people who aren’t competent to stand trial
New Mexico In Depth by
James Ketcherside approached the bushes behind the Las Cruces fire station where the woman had been spending nights, bracing for resistance but determined to try.
She’d been on the streets for months, since a fight with her husband that ended in her arrest and expulsion from the family home. Her trim sweater and clean sneakers did not betray her circumstances, and she volunteered that she was 10 years sober. But the courts had recently stripped her of visitation rights for her children. As her emotions rose, her speech accelerated, each sentence running into the next.
“I worked so hard to get off of pills,” she said, beginning to cry. “The judge said that the only way I’m gonna get my kids back is if I get into some program and get help. And I’m like, I don’t need it.”
Ketcherside heard her out. “I know I don’t like people telling me what to do,” he said. “We’re not telling you what to do.”
An employee of the Doña Ana County Magistrate Court, Ketcherside helps manage the state’s first competency diversion program, for people charged with misdemeanors who have a mental illness and may be unable to understand legal proceedings or participate in their own defense.
Typically, many such defendants who “raise competency” have their charges dismissed, then continue struggling unassisted with their illnesses, and face possible rearrest all over again. Now, as part of the pilot program, Ketcherside steers some of them towards services that can help with medications, housing, and whatever else they need to break the cycle. But he has few tools other than persuasion at his disposal.
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