WAOW - Newsline 9, Wausau News, Weather, SportsState Supreme Court upholds forcing medication
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MADISON (AP) -- The Wisconsin Supreme Court says the state was justified in forcing a mentally ill patient to take his medication without his consent.
The high court says in a split 5-2 decision on Friday that John A. Wood's due process rights were not violated when a circuit court said he could be given psychotropic medicine against his will.
Wood was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect of beating his stepfather to death with a brick in 1978. He was placed in the Mendota Mental Health Institute where he lived off and on ever since.
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley dissented, arguing that in order to force medication on a patient the patient must pose an immediate threat and Wood did not.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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