TAMPA - On Aug. 9, a Hillsborough County circuit judge determined that jail was not appropriate for Sandi Denice Martinez.

She's still there.

Martinez has been jailed since Jan. 11 on charges of prostitution, a myriad of drug violations, robbery and aggravated battery.

On the advice of two mental health experts who evaluated Martinez, Circuit Judge Debra Behnke determined the 30-year-old has significant mental illness and is not competent to stand trial.

By state law, the Florida Department of Children & Families had 15 days after Behnke's ruling to move Martinez from the Falkenburg Road Jail to a state mental hospital.

Martinez is one of 21 mentally ill inmates in Hillsborough County and one of 307 statewide waiting for a bed. The problem has Behnke incensed.

"They're definitely suffering, but they're also getting worse," Behnke said. "We will have to spend more money to get them competent so we can get them back and try them."

If Martinez remains in jail on Friday, Behnke told The Tampa Tribune, she will schedule a hearing at which DCF officials must prove why they have not moved Martinez to a hospital. If they cannot sufficiently answer the question, DCF officials could be held in contempt of court and jailed or fined.

"They're clearly in violation of a court order and a statute," Behnke said.

DCF officials blamed the problem on budget issues and high demand for a limited number of beds in state hospitals. The threat of holding officials in contempt only moves some inmates to the top of a waiting list; it does not help the problem, said Al Zimmerman, the DCF spokesman in Tallahassee.

DCF is placing an average of 30 people per week in its 1,416 beds. The agency has added 275 beds since 2001, with plans for 87 more this year, he said.

Money for new beds would require approval by the Legislature, Zimmerman said. DCF has requested an additional $10.6 million in next year's budget for 129 new beds.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Col. David Parrish, who runs the local jails, said the problem has persisted for as long as he can remember, and he has grown weary of DCF excuses.

"Lack of beds is a DCF problem," Parrish said. "I've got a lack of beds, too, but I've got to take [inmates] anyway. … Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if we took the same approach to local law enforcement? 'I'm sorry. We're full.'"

307 On Waiting List

The problem is bigger than Hillsborough County.

The DCF waiting list - mentally ill inmates sitting in Florida's jails for more than 15 days - stands at 307. On average, a mentally ill inmate waits in jail for 82 days, according to DCF numbers.

In Hillsborough County, when tallied Nov. 3, 21 inmates incompetent to stand trial had been waiting more than 15 days for a bed, Parrish said. The longest had been waiting 81 days. Locally, inmates determined to be incompetent wait an average of 40 days.

Upping The Ante

For years, Parrish said, he has sent letters to DCF officials seeking answers. In September, he upped the ante.

The sheriff's legal staff filed papers in civil court, asking DCF to prove why it cannot take the inmates the law says it must take.

DCF never had to appear in court to explain.

The sheriff's office mentioned eight inmates who had been deemed incompetent but remained jailed for 42 to 111 days. After the paperwork was filed, DCF removed those eight inmates while more than a dozen remained in the jail.

Judge Behnke said she expects similar results if she schedules a hearing in the Martinez case. DCF will immediately move Martinez to a state hospital, and the hearing will be canceled. DCF officials will not have to go to court to explain and, in the meantime, someone else will be left to linger on a waiting list.

"That's not the way to solve a problem," Behnke said.

DCF officials said legal actions such as Behnke's and Parrish's could aggravate the situation rather than help it.

Judges, DCF spokesman Zimmerman said, recently issued an abundance of emergency orders that put some inmates at the top of the list, leaving behind others who had been waiting longer.

That resulted in a 72 percent increase in the number of beds needed in a five-year period - and DCF was unprepared for the spike, he said.

"We decided we could no longer leapfrog these people," Zimmerman said Wednesday. "We stopped placing these people immediately."

Leaving Inmates In The Lurch

Behnke said the law is clear: DCF has 15 days to move an inmate. The agency should not move one to the top of the list because a judge said so and leave others in a lurch.

"I think it would be good if all the judges in Florida got together, found all 300 people who have been waiting for more than 15 days and scheduled a hearing … on why [DCF] shouldn't be held in contempt," she said. "What would they say then?"

Zimmerman said judges also break laws. Often, he said, judges allow only one mental evaluation instead of the two required before a judge can commit an inmate.

Behnke said no judges in Hillsborough County deem an inmate incompetent without evaluations from two mental health experts.

"Maybe it's true in other counties," she said. "We always have two. If they disagree, we even appoint a third."

Behnke said the solution is to promote more mental health facilities. On Nov. 8, she wrote a letter of support for Tampa Crossroads, which is seeking a federal grant to open a local treatment facility for mentally ill defendants.

The letter, sent to a committee that doles out federal grants, said in part: "Please consider the judges' frustration when we know a person is not legally responsible for their crimes, yet, in order to protect the public, we have no choice but to incarcerate them."

State Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, said he expects the Legislature to address the issue this year.

"If this had been brought to our attention in the budgetary process [last year], we would have adequately funded it," he said. "But this is a new one to me."

State Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, echoed the sentiment.

"You don't incarcerate people that are not competent to stand trial," said Wise, who headed the Senate's Criminal Justice Committee last year.

Wise said the state should create more outpatient organizations that keep people on their medications and provide them mental health services.

"The county jails are the largest mental health institutions in the state of Florida," he said.

Reporter Thomas W. Krause can be reached at (813) 259-7698 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Reporter Josh Poltilove contributed to this report.

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