Mary Jennings is an 80-year-old convicted felon with no training in the mental health field. She has operated a group home in Bradenton for the last 30 years without any type of license, a third-degree felony in Florida. Local police are regular visitors, and three deaths – a double-murder and a drug overdose – are linked to her home.
And yet Centerstone of Florida – a behavioral health hospital in Bradenton that has received over $100 million in state and local taxpayer money since 2020 – continues to send mentally ill defendants incapable of understanding the legal system to reside at Jennings’ home during their court-ordered competency restoration processes.
If Centerstone has knowingly been sending clients placed in its care by local judges to reside at an unlicensed facility, that would be an unlawful act, according to state statute…