People with severe mental illness are languishing in jail. Now the state has to pay

People facing criminal charges who are deemed too mentally ill to stand trial or ordered by a judge to a psychiatric hospital are waiting 180 days or more to be admitted, blowing past the 10-day deadline set by Maryland law. The Maryland Department of Health on Wednesday made its case in court that it was doing as much as it could to alleviate the long-standing problem, but Baltimore County Circuit Judge Nancy M. Purpura was not convinced.