from Alchemind Society

April 30, 2002 - Evidencing a disturbing trend, another federal court has ruled that persons awaiting trial may be forcibly administered mind-altering drugs by the government in an effort to re-form their thinking and make them “competent to stand trial.” 

The ruling was issued April 24, 2002, by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of U.S. v. Gomes.

Earlier this month, the Alchemind Society’s Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE) filed an amicus brief in a similar case (U.S. v. Sell), arguing that such forced drugging by the government violates the fundamental right to cognitive liberty, makes a mockery of the “presumption of innocence,” and is contrary to other basic principles underlying the Constitution and the judicial system.  

In a press release concerning the Sell case, CCLE counsel Richard Glen Boire noted: "On the one hand the government is bent on creating a ‘Drug Free America,’ while on the other hand it forces a citizen to take mind-altering drugs despite his repeated objection. The only thing consistent here is the government's astonishingly arrogant assertion that it has the power to determine which mind states and types of thinking are allowed and which it can prohibit or coerce." 

The CCLE is seeking to enter the Gomes case as an amicus party in an effort to better educate the court with regard to the fundamental right to freedom of thought that is at stake in the case, and to ask the court to reconsider its decision.