The legislative session opens Tuesday, a longer 60-day session as this is an odd-numbered year, with more chances to pass legislation.
High on the agenda will be ways of bringing down violent crime in New Mexico – which, according to The Council of State Governments' Justice Center, is higher than any other state (though down 9% since 2019) – and how to improve care for mental illness and addiction.
In an effort to address both issues at once, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and some Democratic lawmakers are set to push for new laws on how cases in which defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial are handled.
But the governor and her party are far from consensus on exactly how that would work.
After lawmakers in last year's legislative session failed to pass the laws the governor wanted, she called a a special session in the summer to focus on public safety, but that ended only hours after it began.
Since then, she has held events around the state where she listens to constituents, but also makes the case for change. In Española last summer she told an audience that since 2017, 16,000 cases were dismissed because the defendants were found to be not mentally competent to stand trial.
Her office did not respond for a request to a source for that number, but at a Courts, Corrections and Justice legislative committee meeting last summer, Karl Swanson, deputy district attorney in the Second Judicial District, outlined the issue from his perspective.
"Every year in Bernalillo County where I work," he said, "we have about 8,000 to 10,000 felony cases coming into our office, and about 5% of them end up being competency cases. So you're talking about 500 to 600 cases."
And he said his options are limited.
"We can either dismiss them or prove that dangerousness and send them up to Las Vegas and have them return back to us, but that's all we can do," he said.
“Sending them to Las Vegas” is shorthand for compulsory treatment for people accused of a felony at the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. About 120 people a year go there.
The governor wants the law to change to compel more people into treatment.
But some civil rights advocates strongly oppose the idea. Last year, when Lujan Grisham convened a special session and backed bills proposed by Republicans designed to address public safety, ACLU Staff Attorney Denali Wilson wrote that two of the bills were, "vastly extending the criteria under which individuals experiencing mental illness could be forcibly locked into treatment facilities and psychiatric hospitals."
Denali said that the bills applied to people not found to be a danger, and that their true purpose was, "to remove people experiencing homelessness and mental illness from public view through imprisonment and institutionalization."
Tim Shields directs the institute in Las Vegas, and expects debate around the subject during the session.
"At what point can the state step in? Can law enforcement step in? Can behavioral health providers step in and say, no, you will receive this treatment?" he said.
At least two versions of a criminal competency bill are expected to be proposed during the session, one backed by the governor and another by Democratic lawmakers.
Shields thinks many more people would benefit from treatment. But one issue with involuntary commitment is there isn't much more capacity in his hospital.
However, Shields said there are enough facilities in the rest of the state to help more defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial. And lawmakers are pushing this session for a lot more funding for behavioral health in Las Vegas and statewide.
