LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Nevada does not have enough space to house defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial, leading jail inmates to wait months for treatment and some to die in custody — even though help is supposed to arrive within seven days.
James Chatien, 37, was killed while awaiting transport to a state forensic facility in October 2022. A month earlier, amid a schizophrenia diagnosis, a judge deemed Chatien not competent to stand trial, meaning two doctors determined he did not understand the charges against him nor could he assist his attorney in his defense.
“I miss my family before this because, everyone is just so angry,” Heaven Burns, Chatien’s cousin, said. “I find it hard to believe that they heard nothing when this man was literally killing him with his bare hands.”
Chatien and Lee Johnson, 32, shared a cell in a psychiatric unit inside the Clark County Detention Center. Corrections officers monitor and patrol the unit while Las Vegas Metro police, the department running the jail, contracts with Tennessee-based Wellpath to run the medical side.