Decision
An involuntarily committed patient who has not been found incompetent, barring an emergency, has a qualified right to refuse psychotropic medication, especially when forced treatment violates his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech or to practice his religion, or his Eighth Amendment rights to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. New Jersey's administrative policies, which provide for a second psychiatric opinion in the case of refusing patients, must give adequate scope for the exercise of that right to satisfy constitutional requirements. Additionally, due process must be followed in order to forcibly medicate an individual against his will. Judge Brotman's order that the least restrictive alternative concept applied to choice of medications was upheld upon appeal.
Read more about this topic: Rennie V. Klein
Famous quotes containing the word decision:
“How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I know my fate. One day my name will be tied to the memory of something monstrous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision invoked against everything that had previously been believed, demanded, sanctified. I am no man, I am dynamite!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)