[1]Rodney Wallace and his mother Darlene Wallace wait for an elevator in the Lewis County Law and Justice Center after his hearing on Thursday.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Toledo resident Rodney Wallace won his freedom from a state mental hospital this summer but found himself back in court last week after the hospital review board found signs he was slipping back into his mental illness.
The farm mechanic was 37 when he was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity of second-degree assault and felony eluding for a July 2005 incident in which he was accused of trying to run down his father and two deputies with a tractor near the family’s Toledo home. He had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
Under state law, the hospital could hold Wallace as long as the maximum time he would have gotten if convicted, which is 10 years, but in August his attorney persuaded a judge Wallace was stabilized and should be allowed to live with his parents, Ralland and Darlene Wallace.
Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt granted Wallace a release with conditions; among the requirements: that he take his medications, refrain from consuming alcohol, and meet regularly with both a community mental health professional and Western State Hospital’s community nurse.
But, Wallace was returned to the hospital in October after a meeting with the hospital’s therapist in which he described talking to his grandparents in heaven, complaining the FBI was following him and that his face was red, literally painted red, according to Senior Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher.
On Thursday, Wallace, his lawyer, his private psychologist, family and friends went before Judge Hunt in an attempt to convince him the hospital was overreacting in claiming he should remain locked up.
Meagher argued for the hospital.
“What the review board concluded was there were signs of decompensation, and that’s one of the conditions of his orders,” Meagher told the judge.
Wallace’s lawyer Zenon Olbertz suggested it was unreasonable to revoke the conditional release, especially since the hospital’s gradual recovery program means a minimum of a 13-month stay.
Olbertz said his client has followed the court’s requirements, taking his medications, seeing his therapists, and “there’s not one sentence in the record, since 2005, that he’ ever been a danger to anybody.”
He downplayed the report of delusional thinking.
“If everybody who has these kinds of thoughts were swept off the street, we wouldn’t have enough places to put them,” Olbertz said.
Hunt said the present situation was “almost predicted” before Wallace was allowed to return to the family farm in August. He revoked Wallace’s conditional release.
“I give a great deal of deference to Western State Hospital,” Hunt said. “I’m unwilling to subject the community to that risk.”
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Read “Toledo man released from Western State Hospital” from Thursday Aug. 19, 2010 here [2]