Florida State Hospital

Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee was established in 1876 and until 1947 it was Florida's only state mental institution. The hospital was originally the site of the Apalachicola Arsenal built in the 1830s and named after the nearby Apalachicola River. The hospital's current Administration Building is the original Officers'Quarters of the Arsenal and is on the National Register of Historic Places. [cite web
year=
month=
url=http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/FL/Gadsden/state.html
title=National Register of Historic Places - Gadsden County, Florida
publisher=
accessdate=2007-10-03 ] It served as asupply depot during the Seminole Wars. The first engagement of the Civil War in Florida took place here on January 6, 1861 when a militia unit from Quincyovercame the Union soldiers at the Arsenal. [cite web
year=
month=
url=http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/FLArsenal1.html
title=Apalachicola Arsenal - Chattahoochee
publisher=
accessdate=2007-10-03 ]

Prison

In 1868, Florida Governor Harrison Reed made the arsenal property at Chattahoochee into Florida's first penitentiary. It was also used to muster Confederate troops. Florida's first recorded inmate was Calvin Williams, incarcerated in Chattahoochee in November 1868 for the crime of larceny and sentenced to one year. By 1869 there were 42 inmates and 14 guards.In 1871, the prison was put under civilian jurisdiction. Malachi Martin was appointed as warden, gaining a reputation for cruelty and corruption. He used prison labor for his personal benefit to build houses and tend his personal vineyards, amassing a huge fortune. The book, "The American Siberia", was written in 1891, portraying the Chattahoochee prison as a place of relentless barbarity. The prisoners were relocated in 1876 to a prison at Raiford and the prison became a state hospital. [cite web
url=http://www.floridamemory.com/Timeline/
title=http://www.floridamemory.com/Timeline/
publisher=The Florida Memory Project
accessdate=2007-10-09]

Notoriety

The hospital has been the focus of numerous investigations over the years for allegations of mistreatment of patients. [cite web
year=
month=
url=http://members.aol.com/bettymaes/flstatehospital/finalreport.htm
title=Final report of the Committee on State Institutions to the Legislative Council in January 1961
publisher=
accessdate=2007-10-03 ] [cite web
url=http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/fl/gadsden/history/fsh10.txt
title=Advisory Council on Mental Health - 1975
publisher=
accessdate=2007-10-08] [cite web
url=http://www.etsu.edu/cass/archives/Collections/afindaid/a161.html
title=Ernest D. Acker Papers
publisher=East Tennessee State University
accessdate=2007-10-09]

The hospital was involved in a famous United States Supreme Court decision in 1975, O'Connor v. Donaldson, when a patient at the hospital, Kenneth Donaldson, sued the hospital and staff for confining him for fifteen years against his will. The decision, as interpreted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), means that it is unconstitutional to commit for treatment a person who is not imminently a danger to himself or others and is capable to a minimal degree of surviving on his own. This interpretation has hampered efforts to implement changes in commitment laws through out the United States, as most states insist the person meet the "imminent danger" standard, accepting the ACLU's interpretation of the Donaldson case. [cite web
year=
month=
url=http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/LegalResources/CaseLaws/Case1.htm
title=O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975)
publisher=
accessdate=2007-10-03 ] The ruling gave momentum to the deinstitutionalization movement in the United States, resulting in the shutting down of many psychiatric hospitals as patients were released to the streets, and has been blamed for causing widespread homelessness in the United States among other problems. [cite web
first=S.
last=Feldman
year=1983
month=June 13
url=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=6885404&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum
title=Out of the hospital, onto the streets: the overselling of benevolence
publisher= Hastings Center Report
pages=5–7
accessdate=2007-10-06] [cite web
url=http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/GeneralResources/article77.htm
title=Update the Baker Act
publisher=Reprint from The Ledger (Lakeland, Florida)
accessdate=2007-10-09]

The hospital was featured in a 1989 movie, "Chattahoochee", starring Gary Oldman and Dennis Hopper.

Current population

The hospital treats individuals with severe and persistent major mental illnesses. There are two categories of patients at the hospital; those civilly committed under Statute 394, who represent a very small portion of the hospital's residents, and those forensically committed under Statute 916. The Civil portion of the hospital houses adult and elderly individuals who have been civilly committed to the hospital, and forensic residents who have been "stepped down" to the civil unit. The civil units are also known as Forensic Transition units. Florida State Hospital also maintains a forensic wing for the Florida Department of Corrections to care for inmates who have been adjudicated through the criminal justice system to be incompetent to proceed, or not guilty by reason of insanity. The current maximum housing capacity is 491 residents in civil units and 646 residents in forensic units. [cite web
url=http://www.dcf.state.fl.us/institutions/fsh/services.shtml
title=Florida State Hospital services
publisher=
accessdate=2007-10-05] The goal of the hospital's efforts are recovery. The hospital aims to restore competency to residents adjudicated incompetent to proceed to trial. Residents receive competency training in both forensic and civil units. The amount of time needed to restore competency varies from a month or two, to up to five years. However, by statute, a patient cannot be committed for more than five years as incompetent to proceed and upon five years of committment that patient will be returned to court to have his/her charges dropped or commutted in some way. For residents adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity the hospital aims to assist the resident in transitioning back into community living by learning appropriate activities for daily living and social cues. Hospital staff ensure the resident is no longer at risk of reoffending before recommending to the judge that the patient is ready for a conditional release to the community. Unlike patients committed as Incompetent to Proceed, those committed as Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity have no time limit on their committment and can remain committed by their presiding judge until their recovery is complete. [cite web
year=2007
month=June 26
url=http://www.nwfdailynews.com/article/6874
title= Walton murder case reopens after 10 years
publisher=Fort Walton Daily News
accessdate=2007-10-09]

Competency to be executed

One of the tasks of the forensic psychologists in the forensic wing is to evaluate an inmate's competency to be executed. [cite web
year=
month=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=S-B-iky44zEC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=chattahoochee+hospital&source=web&ots=cvxwh_axuz&sig=qsUHkFu9lURAL0oGzlCplKpcG8I#PPA164,M1
title=Executing the Mentally Ill: The Criminal Justice System and the Case of Alvin Ford
publisher=Sage
accessdate=2007-10-03 ] [cite web
year=1986
month=April 22
url=http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book4133
title= Executing the Mentally Ill
publisher=Sage
accessdate=2007-10-03 ] This is a result of Ford v. Wainwright, a Florida inmate on death row who took his case to the United States Supreme Court, declaring he was not competent to be executed. The court ruled that a forensic professional must make that evaluation and, if the inmate is found incompetent, provide treatment to aid in his gaining competency so the execution can take place. [cite web
year=
month=
url=http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=Ford%20v.%20Wainwright&url=/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0477_0399_ZO.html
title=Ford v. Wainwright 477 U.S. 399
publisher=Cornell Law School
accessdate=2007-10-03 ] Providing treatment to an individual to enable that person to become competent to be executed puts mental health professionals in an ethical dilemma. [cite web
url=http://www.ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/149/5/596
title=The debate on treating individuals incompetent for execution
publisher=The American Journal of Psychiatry
accessdate=2007-10-09]

Historic place

The former arsenal and current Administration Building of Florida State Hospital is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (Building - #73000578). [cite web
year=
month=
url=http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/FL/Gadsden/state.html
title=National Register of Historic Places - Gadsden County, Florida
publisher=
accessdate=2007-10-03 ]

Built in 1839 as the United States Army Officers Quarters, it is a two-storey masonry brick main building, with one and one half-story wings and front and rear porches framed with carved brackets. [cite web
url=http://www.flheritage.com/facts/reports/places/index.cfm?fuseaction=ListAreas&county=gadsden
title=Florida's History Through Its Places - Officers Quarters
publisher=floridaheritage.com
accessdate=2007-10-09]

ee also

*O'Connor v. Donaldson
*Ford v. Wainwright
*Gideon v. Wainwright

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.flheritage.com/facts/reports/places/index.cfm?fuseaction=FullImage&id=323 Recent photo of Administration Building]
* [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~chattahoochee/chriscalhoun.html Former mental patient's story portrayed in movie]
* [http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=30.70823&lon=-84.84067&datum=nad27&layer=DRG Map of Florida State Hospital grounds]
* [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~chattahoochee/ Florida State Hospital - personal collection of records, old documents and pictures]
* [http://www.city-data.com/zips/32324.html Profile of Chattahoochee town adjacent to the hospital]
* [http://www.frontiernet.net/~brewirish/51.htm Personal memorial to patient who died a FSH by family]
* [http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/fl/gadsden/census/1900fsh.txt White Male Inmates at Florida State Hospital for the Insane 1900 Federal Census]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=KImY2ymGO2AC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=florida+hospital+chattahoochee&source=web&ots=PLkf96_L9N&sig=hlP0lmI1-WocKuX3r3evUgRqh-Q Florida Commitment Laws related to the Insane - 1914]