Yesterday the House and Senate debated the ACLU of MAINE's major legislative priority for this session -- LD 1611, a bill that addresses the problem of solitary confinement at the Maine State Prison. Final enactment of LD 1611 is expected today. The end result is not a an actual change to the law, but the legislature did agree that the Department of Corrections should review its solitary confinement policies. That is certainly a step in the right direction and a moral victory. Nonetheless, we need a change in the law to prohibit mentally ill prisoners from being kept in conditions that exacerbate their illness. We also need to ensure that no prisoner can be placed in solitary confinement for days, months, or even years without any sort of due process. The ACLU of MAINE is committed to following the Department of Correction's progress in reviewing their solitary confinement policies and working to ensure that changes to the law are made as soon as possible.
The House and Senate also debated and passed LD 1811, An Act to Amend Maine's Medical Marijuana Act, yesterday. While the ACLU of MAINE supported creation of a registry for those patients who wanted state sanction and dispensaries to make medical marijuana more available for patients who needed it, we remain very concerned by one consequence of the new law: registration is now mandatory for all medical marijuana patients. There are many valid reasons that patients may not want to divulge to the state the decision they and their doctors have made to use medical marijuana. We believe the mandatory nature of the registration violates patient/doctor privacy and will work to repeal that aspect of the law next session.
LD 1360, An Act Regarding Mental Health Treatment, will likely be debated today. The bill makes involuntary commitment of mentally ill patients to both inpatient and outpatient treatment easier, reducing the due process protections for individuals with mental illness. Mental illness cannot by itself be a justifiable reason for depriving a person of liberty against his or her objection. And despite the best intentions of the people who love them, even individuals with severe and persistent mental illness must be afforded full due process if they are to be held, involuntarily, in a treatment setting. Involuntary hospitalization and community-based treatment is justified only when, under strict procedures, it is determined by reasons of mental illness that there is imminent physical danger to such person or others, evidenced by criminal acts or other observed behavior, and there is no less restrictive alternative.
Finally, LD 1536, which would allow game wardens to stop ATV riders without "reasonable and articulable suspicion," is still being tossed back and forth from the House to the Senate. The Senate voted to amend the bill to retain the requirement of reasonable and articulable suspicion unless the landowner specifically requests that wardens conduct random stops on their property. We did not object to that amendment, but the House did. It is unclear how that will end up.