Bartender Accused of Threatening Speaker of the House

Prisons are full of mentally ill people who are rotting away in cells rather than healing in treatment facilities.

While mental illness runs at a prevalence of about 6% in the general population, it shoots up to 15% among men in prison and 30% among incarcerated women.

This could be the fate for 44-year-old Ohio bartender, Michael Hoyt, whom I have not met nor evaluated. News recently broke that the FBI foiled Hoyt’s alleged plan to kill the Republic speaker of the House of Representatives.

John Boehner was reportedly a regular at an Ohio country club where Hoyt served him drinks for many years. The plan, according to news reports, was to shoot or poison Boehner.

Hoyt is charged with threatening to kill Boehner, a serious crime that carries a maximum sentence of 30 years. If convicted, Hoyt could spend the rest of his life in federal prison.

He is currently being evaluated at the Devens federal medical center in Massachusetts, which is specialized for inmates in need of mental health care. Hoyt reportedly suffers from a major mental illness, one that resulted in admission to inpatient psychiatry wards and resulted in prescription antipsychotic medications. Delusional thinking, hallucinations, paranoia, and obsessions are all symptoms that Hoyt’s court documents allegedly reflect.

Hoyt’s stay at Devens was only authorized for 45 days though. It’s quite possible that at the end of this time, he might slip away from mental healthcare and into the criminal justice system.

Groups working on mental illness say the pattern that could unfold for Hoyt is all too common. Amid the heavy emphasis on incarceration and punishment in the US, as opposed to treatment and rehabilitation, mentally ill people are too often sucked into the criminal justice system when they should be securely cared for by medical experts.

Whatever the outcome for Hoyt, this contemporary case illustrates the need for earlier interventions and more comprehensive healthcare for our mentally ill citizens. Republican congressman Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, offers a good start to solving this far too common problem. His Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act would redirect the more than 11 million Americans with severe mental illnesses away from jails, prisons and the streets and back into psychiatric care – where they should be.

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