Las Vegas inmates deemed mentally ill face long waits for treatment; some die before they get help

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – Nevada does not have enough space to hold defendants deemed unfit to stand trial, causing prison inmates to wait months for treatment and some to die in custody – even though help should arrive within seven days.

James Chatien, 37, was killed while awaiting transport to a state forensic center in October 2022. A month earlier, during a schizophrenia diagnosis, a judge deemed Chatien unfit to stand trial trial, meaning that two doctors concluded that he did not understand the charges against him. and he could not help his lawyer to defend himself.

“I missed my family before this because, everyone is so angry,” Heaven Burns, Chatien’s cousin, said. I find it hard to believe that they didn’t hear anything when this man killed him with his bare hands.”

Chatien and Lee Johnson, 32, shared a cell in the psychiatric unit inside the Clark County Detention Center. Correctional officers monitor and guard the facility while Las Vegas Metro police, the agency that runs the jail, contracts with Tennessee-based Wellpath to run the medical side.

As Chatien’s mental illness worsened, his run-ins with the police increased. By 2022, Chatien no longer looked like the cousin Burns knew.

“He would go out and tell people about God,” Burns said. “Sometimes it went well, sometimes it didn’t.”

Chatien appeared in Las Vegas County Court on June 3, 2021, for a public appearance. It was his 64th^th caught – and last. Clark County Magistrate Judge Christy Craig, who presides over the county’s special jury, found Chatien incompetent to stand trial, ordering him from jail to one of two hospitals where the defendants receive treatment to restore their mental health.

The right to a fair trial – and the right to the ability to stand trial – is enshrined in the US Constitution as interpreted by the courts.

As of this month, there are 239 beds in two state facilities for this type of treatment – treatment from the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health requires “urgent” and “rehabilitation” and treatment needed to begin within a month. seven days of the judge’s disqualification.

Chatien told the judge that he stood up first.

“I waited like two or three months,” Chatien told the judge after his arrest.

“I tell you, I don’t know how long,” the judge replied.

After his arrest, Chatien continued between the courts until September 2022. On September 2, 2022, Craig ordered Chatien to undergo treatment. October 18 – six weeks later – what should have been his temporary cell would become the scene of his murder.

Johnson, who was in jail on battery charges, told police he was “tired of being disrespected … so he tried to kill her,” documents said. Documents 8 News Now Investigators obtained revealed throughout the weeks of waiting, the unit’s staff ignored Chatien’s warning about potential problems, writing that he had “several documents” to abuse the light of his cell phone.

On the day of his murder, Chatien turned on his phone light at 1:47 p.m. Records officers turned it off two minutes later. Chatien called for help again six minutes later at 1:53 p.m. At 2:04 p.m. — more than 15 minutes after that first sign of trouble — officers found Chatien dead on the ground.

The coroner’s office determined that Chatien’s cause of death was blunt force trauma.

Metro Police denied a records request by 8 News Now investigators for video from that day, saying it “could compromise the safety of law enforcement personnel and the security of the Clark County Detention Center.”

“Prisons are natural,” Chief Deputy Public Defender Arlene Heshmati said. Although they offer some treatment, they are not medical facilities.

Chatien’s is one of two diseases Heshmati points to when he urges defendants to get “speedy restorative treatment” or have their cases dismissed.

Chatien waited 46 days – a waiting period that ended when he died. 8 News Now reports Investigators found the average wait time that month was an even longer 51 days. As of this July, the number has doubled to a staggering 128 days — more than four months are treated as a prisoner while the system considers you a patient.

“I would say that is totally unacceptable,” Heshmati said. “The system is failing these people. Every day they are in custody is a day lost because there is nothing they can do about their case.”

For more than a year, 8 News Investigators have joined Heshmati, the prosecutor and Craig to watch the eviction process in court. More than 1,500 potential referrals passed through Craig’s department last year.

About once a month, Heshmati will file a motion to dismiss, and the prosecutor will counter. Now it’s up to Craig to decide what happens next. Often, the former public defender will criticize the government for not moving the prisoners sooner. If he dismisses the case, he will first give the government one more chance to move the prisoner within seven days.

Craig has billed the state more than $150,000 so far — or $500 a day in each case, according to a spokesman. It’s money that a federal agent, appearing in a lawsuit over Zoom, says is better spent elsewhere.

“Issuing contempt against the division is not going to change how hard we are working to try to work on these solutions and come up with alternatives as well as a long-term plan,” said the Senior Deputy Speaker. of Law Trisha Chapman during an earlier hearing. year.

That plan includes adding hundreds of new beds to the new Clark County facility. In 2023, the Nevada Legislature budgeted $60 million for the project. The group had been working to convert cells in a Las Vegas jail into forensic beds.

Until then, Heshmati said he will continue to fight for deportation if necessary. With each passing day, his clients are sitting in jail and not in the hospital.

“He could see, obviously, he wouldn’t hit the bull’s eye many times – and they ignored him,” Burns said of his cousin’s death, admitting he knew he was going to die. “I think everyone failed him – maybe he failed him too.”

The second man, Fernando Martinez, died in custody in 2023 while awaiting treatment. Martinez, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, starved herself for two and a half months, lost more than 60 kilograms and died.

As of early October, the average wait time from the jail to one of the two facilities was 78 days, according to the spokeswoman. The reduction was due to more staff and added beds – another 50 were added earlier this year.

Johnson’s murder trial has not been scheduled since he has been in and out of capacity. Metro Police declined to comment citing the ongoing litigation. The Nevada Attorney General’s Office also declined, citing the cases.

As of September, about 100 people on average were waiting for a treatment bed in Clark County, reports said.

8 News Now Investigator David Charns can be reached at dcharns@8newsnow.com.