Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas didn't want Manuel Flores freed from prison after the sex offender served a 16-month sentence for throwing rocks and a bottle of beer at a police officer, and then speaking in tongues when he was read his Miranda rights.
By labeling Flores a mentally disordered offender, Rackauckas has kept him involuntarily locked in a psychiatric hospital for more than a decade beyond his 1999 criminal sentence.
Flores says his confinement isn't fair, but you be the judge because he:
]
–Heard mysterious voices speaking to him;
–Lodged a nail in his shoe so it could be used as a weapon;
–Kept a shank in his pocket;
–Spit obsessively and reacted violently when confronted;
–Regularly hallucinated;
–Refused to take medication;
–Lit a paper towel roll under his bed and then denied the act;
–Attacked other patients and threatened to kill hospital staffers;
and
–In
Oct. 2010, Flores became “extremely paranoid and suspicious” when he
declared that he didn't know how to breathe,” according to court
records.
A
2012 jury heard the evidence–including that a psychiatrist declared him “severely” disturbed–and sided with Rackauckas. Flores
appealed. Through a lawyer, he argues that records of his behavior are
not reliable and should not be considered in evaluating whether he's in
la-la land.
This month, a California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana sanctioned the jury's findings and declared that even when he's properly
medicated Flores continues “to pose a substantial danger.”
Upshot: Flores, 45, will remain involuntarily committed in the mental hospital.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.