At first, Goldstein's act appeared to be random and mindless violence.  However, as the facts underlying the tragedy unfolded, it was quickly learned Goldstein had a ten-year-long history of schizophrenia, the severest of all mental illnesses.  It further became known that Goldstein's family had, for an extended period of time prior to the day he pushed Kendra in front of the subway train, attempted to obtain psychiatric treatment for him, including medication and hospitalization.  Their efforts had all been unsuccessful.

       The reason Andrew Goldstein, floridly psychotic, was on the subway platform that day was because New York law allowed him to be there.  He could not be compelled to undergo medical treatment for his illness.  Ironically, one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is the patient's lack of awareness that he or she is ill at all.  Thus, not believing they are in need of treatment or care, many of these people inhabit our streets, parks and freeway underpasses refusing the very medications which would help them to see their illness.

       As the result of the Kendra Webdale - Andrew Goldstein incident, New York State passed a law commonly known as "Kendra's Law" in memory of Ms. Webdale.  Kendra's law allows doctors, family members and others to compel treatment for persons such as Andrew Goldstein who are, in a very real sense, ticking time bombs which will inevitably go off if left untreated.  Kendra's Law came too late to save Kendra Webdale, but it has, no doubt, prevented further tragedies since its passage.

       AB 1421 is now pending before the California Legislature.  It a bill enacting a law similar to Kendra's Law.  In the form it was originally introduced, AB 1421 was enlightened and much needed in California.  However, on its journey from the Assembly to the Senate, multiple amendments have been added which, if left attached to the bill, will emasculate much of the benefit of the proposed law.

       Who would oppose such a law?  AB 1421's opponents is a coalition of civil rights attorneys, patient advocate groups and health care providers.  The civil rights lawyers argue that mentally ill persons have a constitutional right to be ill so long as they do not pose a danger to themselves or others.  The patient groups oppose the law because they do not wish to be forced to undergo outpatient psychiatric treatment, to take medication to help control their disease or, if necessary, be hospitalized against their will.  And the mental health care providers don't like the additional requirements and accountability the law will require of them.  

       I am as fervent and passionate a civil libertarian as anyone, a genuine card-carrying member of the ACLU.  But I am also the father of a schizophrenic son.  And a lawyer.  And on this issue, I part company with the ACLU and my brethren civil rights attorneys.

       AB 1421 provides a medical answer to a medical issue.  We involuntarily confine and treat mentally ill persons who are adjudicated to be a danger to themselves or to others.  AB 1421 is a logical extension of this obviously necessary principle.  When a patient's family member sees his schizophrenic child, spouse or parent stop taking prescribed medication and begin a downward slide into psychosis or worse, present California law does not allow for the family to seek to compel their ill loved one to get any help whatsoever, often until it is too late, as was true in case of Kendra Webdale.

       AB 1421 closes that gap, a Grand Canyon sized "crack" through which many severely mentally ill people fall.  The argument that such persons have "a right" to be mentally ill fails because, since their judgment and thinking are profoundly impaired by their illness and they cannot competently or rationally assert such a right in any event.  An analogy is the acknowledged inability of a mentally impaired person to enter a plea to a crime.

       California is often a leader in progressive and humanitarian laws.  AB 1421 is such a law.  It should be restored to its original and most effective form and passed without delay by the Legislature.