State v. K. M. (In re K. M.)
Court | Court of Appeals of Oregon |
Citation | 496 P.3d 1099,314 Or.App. 586 |
Docket Number | A172499 |
Parties | In the MATTER OF K. M., a Person Alleged to have Mental Illness. State of Oregon, Respondent, v. K. M., Appellant. |
Decision Date | 15 September 2021 |
Joseph R. DeBin and Multnomah Defenders, Inc., filed the brief for appellant.
Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman, Solicitor General, and Jordan R. Silk, Assistant Attorney General, filed the brief for respondent.
Before DeVore, Presiding Judge, and DeHoog, Judge, and Mooney, Judge.
This is a civil commitment case. Appellant appeals a judgment involuntarily committing her to the custody of the Mental Health Division for a period not to exceed 180 days and prohibiting her from purchasing or possessing firearms. She argues that there was insufficient evidence to prove that, at the time of the hearing, she had a mental disorder that caused her to be dangerous to others. See ORS 426.005(1)(f)(A) ;1 ORS 426.130.2 Because we conclude that the record does not support, by clear and convincing evidence, the trial court's determination that appellant poses a danger to others because of a mental disorder, we reverse.
Appellant does not request, and we do not exercise our discretion to conduct, de novo review. We instead review the sufficiency of the evidence for legal error, mindful of the state's burden to prove its case by clear and convincing evidence and viewing the evidence and inferences permissibly drawn from that evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court's disposition of the case. State v. E. J. J. , 308 Or. App. 603, 604, 479 P.3d 1073 (2021) ; ORS 426.130(1)(a). We state the facts, drawn from the record, in accordance with that standard of review.
Appellant is an experienced social worker. She has a master's degree in social work, and it appears that she may also have a PhD in that field. Appellant's next door neighbor, Grisham, testified that he and appellant had "been pretty positive neighbors for 13 years." That changed in June 2019, when appellant began sending him "a lot of text messages," beginning with one in which she expressed concern that she was out of town and no one was watching her cats. Grisham testified that he did not know appellant was out of town and that she had not asked him to watch her cats. In response to her text messages, Grisham offered to watch her cats. He described a fairly extensive exchange of text messages that went from appellant checking in on her cats to a number of insults, threats, and accusations that she directed to Grisham, including a threat "to shoot [him] if anything happened to her cats."
Grisham testified that, although he noticed that appellant's car was parked at her house twice, he had not seen her since before the text message exchange that began in June 2019. But he was concerned that he might get out of his car one day and that he would "find [her] there." He was also concerned that appellant might call the authorities and lie about him.
Another witness, Sparkman, testified that she was the "acting supervisor" on duty when appellant came into Multnomah County Animal Services one day. Sparkman described her interaction with appellant as follows:
Bryson, a Portland police officer and member of the behavioral health unit, testified that he had "received a referral regarding" appellant in June 2019. After attempting to contact appellant, Bryson received two email messages from her declining to meet with him. Those messages were lengthy and they contained comments about Bryson and other police officers that were personally and professionally insulting.
Wood, executive director of the Dougy Center for grieving children and families, testified that appellant interned with that agency in 2000 and 2001 and that she might have met appellant "in passing" then. However, she has more recently "received many phone calls, voicemails, and emails from" appellant, all of which were "combative, threatening, very mean[ ]spirited [and] accusatory." Specifically, Wood described appellant's communications as:
Patterson, operations director at the Oregon Humane Society (OHS), testified that he was called down to the admissions department in April 2019 due to the presence of "an irate client," who turned out to be appellant. Appellant told him that they "had her animals," a statement he testified was not true. Appellant "continued yelling and cussing at [Patterson]" and began "talking about" OHS's executive director, Harmon—indicating that she was a veterinarian when that is apparently not the case—and the chief operating officer, August—questioning why someone with a law degree would be in his position with the organization. The police were called and appellant was "trespassed" from OHS.
Patterson testified that appellant later returned to OHS insisting that her cats were there and demanding that they return them to her. He described her voice as loud and said that she kept repeating, cats. He testified to how the interaction then came to include Harmon:
At that point, appellant was taken to the Unity Center, a behavioral health facility that provides emergency services and inpatient care, by Project Respond.
, grandiosity, irritability, pressured speech." She described appellant as "hyperverbal, impulsive, [with] poor insight and poor judgment." She prescribed risperidone, a medication used to treat certain mental and mood disorders such as bipolar disorder, but appellant has declined to take that medication.
Hancock testified that it is important for appellant to take the risperidone because "[appellant]’s been increasingly threatening in the community." In support of that conclusion, Hancock testified that (1) there had been three restraining orders against appellant,4 (2) appellant had been sending "increasingly threatening and aggressive emails to various community entities and individuals, secondary to delusional thought
content," and (3) she (Hancock) "felt threatened" by appellant when they spoke, indicating that she would have wanted "an escort" to her car were appellant to be discharged the night they spoke. Hancock confirmed that appellant had been placed in seclusion upon admission to Unity Center's inpatient behavioral health service. She also testified that, at the time of the hearing, appellant was no longer in seclusion or on the "safety suite." There had been no violent or problematic physical contact between appellant and staff and no attempts by appellant to elope or otherwise leave against medical advice.
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