On The Front Lines
Federal Court Denies Protection to Disabled Man Wrongfully Arrested and Locked up in Mental Health Facility Based on Slurred Speech, Unsteady Gait
Documents
Click here to read The Rutherford Institute's complaint in Gordon Goines v. David Shaw et al.
HARRISONBURG, Va. — A federal court has granted qualified immunity to police officers who wrongfully arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and subsequently locked up a disabled man for five days in a mental health facility against his will and with no access to family and friends, apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait. In dismissing the Fourth Amendment lawsuit filed by attorneys of The Rutherford Institute on behalf of 37-year-old Gordon Goines, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia granted a motion filed by police officers, the Valley Community Services Board (VCSB) and one of its mental health screeners, ruling that the police did not clearly violate the law in seizing Goines and that the screener’s conclusion that Gordon Goines could be held as mentally ill was presumptively correct because it was accepted by the magistrate who ordered his detention.
Rutherford Institute attorneys argued that the defendants violated clearly established law protecting citizens from unjustified mental health seizures when they allegedly recommended that Goines, a resident of Waynesboro who suffers from a neurological condition similar to multiple sclerosis, be committed as mentally ill and dangerous. A subsequent hearing showed that Goines has no mental illness and should not have been confined.
“By giving government officials the power to declare individuals mentally ill and detain them against their will without first ensuring that they are actually trained to identify such illness, the government has opened the door to a system in which involuntary detentions can be used to make people disappear,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of the award-winning book Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Indeed, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally.”
Gordon Goines resides in Waynesboro and suffers from cerebellar ataxia, a neurological condition similar to multiple or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrigs disease. As a result, Goines has difficulty at times with his balance, causing him to walk unsteadily, speaks slowly and with a slur and has problems with fine motor skills. Goines has no cognitive impairment, is of above-average intelligence, and acutely aware of what is happening around him. The complaint alleges that on May 15, 2014, Goines was having problems with his cable television reception, including disconnections and extremely loud line noise and signals, and called the cable company for assistance. A technician determined that a neighbor had spliced into Goines cable and recommended Goines contact police about the theft. Goines walked across the street to the Waynesboro Police Dept. and reported the theft to one officer, who called on two other officers to follow Goines home and investigate his complaint.
However, the first officer reported that Goines was having “mental health issues.” The officers then proceeded to question Goines about his “mental health issues”; Goines told them he did not have any mental health problems. The officers then asked Goines if he wanted to go talk to someone; believing they meant about the cable theft, Goines told them he did. The officers then handcuffed him and transported Goines, who pleaded to be taken home, to Augusta County Medical Center. After he arrived, he was examined by an employee of VCSB who concluded that Goines suffered from a psychotic condition and a petition for Goines’ involuntary detention was filed as a result. According to the complaint, the VCSB screener was not a licensed medical professional, clinical psychologist or social worker and so lacked the required training to diagnose mental disorders. The petition was granted and Goines was committed to Crossroads Mental Health Center and held against his will and without access to family and friends until May 20, 2014, when a subsequent hearing found that Goines had no mental illness and should not be confined. Affiliate attorney Timothy Coffield is assisting The Rutherford Institute in its defense of Goines.
Case History
