ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - State health officials are involved in a legal dispute over their plan to transfer a manslaughter defendant to a prison hospital in another state because officials have said he is too dangerous to be kept in Alaska.
The defense attorney for 24-year-old Duop Tharjiath has asked a judge to halt the proposed move from the Alaska Psychiatric Institute to a for-profit hospital in South Carolina, The Anchorage Daily News reported.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services wants to transfer Tharjiath to the Columbia Regional Care Center, officials said.
Tharjiath has a “history of extreme violence” that would make admitting him to the Alaska Psychiatric Institute’s forensic unit dangerous, the department said.
The move is unnecessary, would be harmful and “inhumane,” Alaska Public Defender Agency attorney Julia Moudy said.
Sending Tharjiath to South Carolina would isolate him from regular contact with his attorney, public guardian, medical providers and family in Alaska, Moudy said.
Tharjiath, who has been diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia, was charged with manslaughter and assault.
Tharjiath walked away from an assisted living home in Anchorage, stole a car and backed into two people in a parking lot, charging documents said.
Veronique Long, 59, was killed and a man who was not identified was seriously injured when Tharjiath backed out of a parking spot “at a high rate of speed” and struck them and ran over Long, documents said.
In May, a court found Tharjiath mentally incompetent to stand trial, meaning he cannot understand or legally participate in the proceedings against him.
The South Carolina facility is owned by Wellpath of Nashville, Tennessee, which was involved in a failed privatization bid at Alaska Psychiatric Institute earlier this year.
Tharjiath’s case is only the second in decades in which state officials have attempted to transfer the care of a mentally ill criminal defendant outside Alaska.
Alaska residents charged with crimes and found too mentally ill to stand trial have been previously treated in the “competency restoration” program at the state psychiatric hospital in Anchorage.
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