Controversial provision makes exception for individuals adjudged mentally ill
By Steve Lash
BridgeTower Media Newswires
BALTIMORE, MD — A man found guilty but not criminally responsible in the stabbing death of his former Dundalk landlord will likely be returned not to a Maryland psychiatric facility but to an Ohio prison, where he is to serve an 11-year sentence for assaulting a police officer.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Pablo Aleman’s appeal of what his lawyers called the Maryland Court of Appeals’ too narrow interpretation of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers’ call for prisoners to be returned to the state where they are already serving a criminal sentence. The IAD’s controversial return provision makes an exception for individuals adjudged mentally ill and needing treatment.
Without comment, the justices let stand the Maryland high court’s 5-2 decision in June that the exception applies only to defendants suffering current mental incompetence and not those – like Aleman – who were found to have been mentally ill at the time of their offense.
A Maryland court order that Aleman be returned to Ohio had been stayed pending his appeal to the Supreme Court.
In Aleman’s unsuccessful petition for the high court’s review, attorneys Brian L. Zavin and Piedad Gomez cited the justices’ 1983 Jones v. United States decision that individuals found not criminally responsible are not magically cured right after their offense but are “likely to remain ill” unless and until they receive treatment.
Also, the IAD expressly states that it “shall be liberally construed so as to effectuate its purposes,” including ensuring treatment for those adjudged mentally ill, wrote Zavin and Gomez, of the Maryland public defender’s appellate division.
“The prisoner’s rehabilitation is advanced by committing him in the receiving state (Maryland), where he has been found not criminally responsible and in need of treatment,” the attorneys wrote.
“Returning him to the sending state does not address his need for treatment,” Zavin and Gomez added in the petition. “Prison facilities are not equipped to rehabilitate people suffering from severe mental disorders.”
Zavin, deputy chief of the appellate division, was Aleman’s counsel of record at the high court.
The Maryland attorney general’s office waived its right to respond to Aleman’s petition for Supreme Court review unless the justices requested a response. That request was never made.
The Supreme Court’s denial of Aleman’s appeal is simply that and not a decision on the scope of the IAD. The case was docketed at the high court as Pablo Javier Aleman v. State of Maryland, No. 20-415.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the high court last month, did not participate in the Supreme Court’s consideration of Aleman’s appeal.
Zavin did not immediately return a request for comment on Aleman’s case after the high court’s denial.
The Maryland attorney general’s office declined to comment.
Maryland law enforcement’s interstate hunt for Aleman ended two weeks after the March 17, 2016, slaying of Victor Serrano when law enforcement discovered Aleman in an Ohio hospital.
Aleman had been shot on a highway by a suburban Cincinnati police officer whom he had threatened with a knife while screaming, “Kill me, kill me.” The encounter, captured on Officer Josh Hilling’s body camera, can be seen on the YouTube website.
Aleman pleaded guilty in Ohio to felonious assault and was sentenced. He was subsequently transferred under the IAD to Maryland, where he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder but claimed he was not criminally responsible due to mental illness.
A Baltimore County Circuit Court jury agreed in 2018, and a judge initially ordered him committed to the state Department of Health. But local officials, citing the IAD, held him in a detention center and prepared to return him to Ohio.
Aleman filed a petition seeking enforcement of the order that he be committed to the department. But a judge rejected Aleman’s motion, saying the commitment order was trumped by the interstate compact.
In upholding Aleman’s ordered return, the intermediate Court of Special Appeals ruled last year that the IAD supersedes Section 3-112 of the Maryland Criminal Procedure Article, which provides for the commitment of people found not criminally responsible.
The Court of Appeals agreed, saying Aleman was not adjudicated as currently mentally ill. The court added that defendants deemed not criminally responsible are treated no differently under the interstate compact than any other defendant who must be returned after adjudication to the state from which he or she was sent.
