Abstract

In January 2009, the California Court of Appeal for the Fifth District held that an individual suffering from paranoid schizophrenia could be forcefed and medicated despite his refusal of consent. The patient was a prison inmate, who engaged in a hunger strike to protest imagined abuses by prison guards. The court, reconciling conflicting provisions of California law, upheld the appointment of a conservator to make treatment decisions because the patient could not participate in those decisions “by means of a rational thought process.” However, in tying mental capacity to the plausibility of a protestor’s claims, the court risks placing political dissent at the mercy of judicial discretion.