"THREE STRIKES" FOR THE MENTALLY ILL

Copyright 1995 National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

Duane Silva's mother always knew there was something wrong with her only son. As a baby, Duane couldn't sit up for his first birthday photo. He never crawled. He walked late. "When he was a little boy," Baudelia remembers, "school children called him 'crazy, stupid, retarded.' They would gather in front of my house and yell insults at him."

Baudelia Silva worked hard all her life raising Duane and his two older sisters. She was an agricultural worker in the fertile bread basket of California's central valley. She has never taken welfare nor asked for it. But she would need help for her son. By high school, it was apparent that Duane was not only developmentally delayed but mentally ill as well. He had uncontrollable mood swings. Police would find him wandering streets and country roads, totally disoriented.

It was then Mrs. Silva entered the twilight land of trying to obtain help, only to find non existed. In broken yet eloquent English, she pleads, "When my son is sick in the stomach, I take him to the doctor. When my son in sick in the ear, I take him to the doctor. When my son is sick in the head, why can't I take him to the doctor?" Instead, Duane Silva is now in a reception center at the Wasco Prison awaiting assignment to lengthy incarceration.

By all accounts a non-violent, even passive 23-year-old, he has recently been convicted of his "third strike." On Oct. 20, 1994, Judge Melinda Reed in Tulare County court sentenced him to 30 years-to-life in prison. What did this mentally ill young man do? At 18, still in high school, he set two trash can fires, causing only minor damage, explaining to police he was working for the Sheriff's office as a patrolman to walk the streets of Strathmore and "burn down all the dope dealers' businesses." At 20, he set small fires in two trucks in Porterville, then alerted a truck owner, who put the fire out with a garden hose after damage to one vehicle's dashboard. Ruled incompetent to stand trial, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, where his diagnosis was "borderline intellectual functioning (IQ 70) and schizoid personality disorder." Returned to Tulare County, he was released on a plea bargain to two counts of arson. "He pleaded guilty," recalls his public defender, Hugo Loza, "to get credit for time served with the condition that he follow up with mental health (treatment) and take the medication that was prescribed. Who knew this was going to be a stepping stone for a life sentence?" He was sent home to him mother, who worked long hours and sometimes would have to follow the crops as far away as Washington.

When Duane acted bizarre and become dysfunctional, she took him to the Mental Health Clinic in Porterville. "They told me," she recalls, "there's nothing we can do." In Visalia, he set fire to a trash bin in a sanitation yard. After 240 days in jail, he was released for time served and given three years probation. Baudelia Silva beseeched the court for placement where Duane would get training and treatment and be kept busy and safe. Instead, Duane wandered aimlessly, picked up by police as far away as Palos Verdes. After the Three Strikes legislation went into effect, the home of Antonio Macias, a lifelong friend of the Silvas, was burglarized. A VCR, some jewelry, old coins--all valued at under $2,000--were taken. Duane told Macias he knew where there was a VCR "just like it." He later admitted the theft. That was his Third Strike, leading to the 30-year sentence. "I don't mind if I get compensated for my losses or not," Macias wrote the judge. "I plead you (sic) to support him and his mother....In my opinion he is not a criminal." Baudelia Silva is left in tears. "How will Duane survive in prison?" she laments. "When his sickness comes on him, how will they control it? They will kill him." Such is the plight of one family under this draconian law. "When my son is sick in the head, why can't I take him to a doctor?" by Carla Jacobs, CAMI board member

Note: The following is reprinted from the CAMI Statement, vol. XIV, no. 6.