Committee hears testimony that S.193 would create secure forensic facility to restore competency for a small group of defendants

The House Corrections & Institutions Committee heard extended testimony on S.193, a bill to establish a forensic facility to provide competency restoration services to defendants in a narrow subset of life-offense cases.

Jared Bianchi, who identified himself as a prosecutor in Pennington County and spoke on behalf of state prosecutors, told the committee the bill addresses an "extraordinarily narrow population" but one with urgent needs: defendants in serious cases who are found incompetent or for whom sanity is at issue and for whom the current system offers no practical path to restoration. "We are spending an inordinate amount of time, especially with competency cases, litigating the question of whether the person is competent in the first instance instead of moving beyond that to see whether they can be restored to competency," Bianchi said. He estimated the program would serve roughly five new cases a year, acknowledging that caseloads could accumulate over time if restorations are not achieved.

Bianchi told lawmakers that under the bill, defendants who require hospital-level care would still go to a hospital, but those who do…