The court found an obvious error in his commitment and upheld it anyway

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that a superior court made an obvious mistake when it committed a homeless Anchorage man to the state psychiatric hospital without checking whether anyone had offered him voluntary treatment first. Then it upheld the commitment, because the man had never said he would have accepted.

The court identifies him as Derius L. He was committed to the Alaska Psychiatric Institute for 90 days in March 2024 and ordered medicated against his will.

State law requires a commitment petition to state that the person was told he needed treatment and declined to seek it voluntarily. The court calls that a safeguard against unnecessary commitment. The petition in this case said the advisement had been given. The institute's own doctor testified at the hearing that she did not believe anyone had discussed voluntary admission with him.

The justices found the error did no harm. Derius never told the superior court he would have signed in voluntarily, and at the hearing he repeatedly asked to be let out, saying "discharge me and release me." The doctor predicted that even if he had admitted himself, he would have wanted to leave the next day. His public defender asked the court to use the stricter standard that applies in criminal cases, where the state must prove an error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The court declined, saying no Alaska case had applied that standard to civil commitment.

How the case was reviewed came down to a missed deadline. A court master issued recommendations and neither side objected within the 10 days the rules require, which the court held was mandatory. That limited the entire appeal to plain error, the narrowest kind of review, under which a mistake must be both obvious and obviously damaging.

The man in the opinion had been admitted 42 times before. He is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, traumatic brain injury and polysubstance dependence, and had been barred from assisted living facilities and shelters in Anchorage. In January 2024 he came to the hospital appearing to want out of the cold. Staff fed him and sent him away. He came back in a thin jacket and was admitted.

The court also upheld the finding that nowhere less restrictive was available. The only alternative anyone proposed was an estranged brother in Arizona who had not seen him in about 15 years, worked 12-hour shifts and had five young children. His mother told the court it was "not going to work out, period." Derius said he knew nothing about Arizona.

The medication order permitted seven drugs at once, including two antipsychotics and a mood stabilizer. A nurse practitioner who had treated him for nearly five years testified the plan met the standard of care. She also testified he had been unable to appreciate his need for medication since arriving, which the court acknowledged sat oddly against the fact that he was taking medication voluntarily and attending some treatment meetings. By the time of that hearing he had gone more than a month without restraints, seclusion or crisis medication.

The 90-day order would have expired around mid-June 2024. The opinion came two and a half years later and never addresses whether an expired order is still reviewable. Nothing in the record says what happened to him after it ended.

Whether voluntary treatment was ever available to him is a live question beyond this case. A legislative appendix from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority states flatly that "Alaska Psychiatric Institute (API) does not accept voluntary admissions."