JUDICIAL DECISIONS Involuntary administration of drugs by state does not violate due process

— State’s policy and procedure for the involuntary administration of antipsychotic drugs to patients at the state mental hospital does not violate substantive or procedural due process. Hightower by Dehler v. Olmstead, 959 F. Supp. 1549 (N.D. Ga. 1996). No legal authority to confine voluntary patient. — When the patient, who was voluntarily confined, killed and wounded another, the trial court erred by denying the physicians’ motions for summary judgment when, at the relevant time, the patient was an out-patient. The physicians had no control of the patient in the sense that the physician could claim legal authority to confine or restrain the patient against the patient’s will unless the patient met the criteria for involuntary commitment. Additionally, there was no evidence from which one could conclude that the physicians knew or reasonably should have known that the patient was likely to cause bodily harm to oneself or to the victims. Keppler v. Brunson, 205 Ga. App. 32, 421 S.E.2d 306 (1992). Motion to involuntarily medicate defendant improperly granted. — Trial court erred in granting the state’s motion to involuntarily medicate the defendant in an attempt to make the defendant competent to stand trial because the defendant argued that the defendant had a statutory right to avoid involuntary medication; and, under the four-part Sell test (Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166, 123 S. Ct. 2174, 156 L. E. 2d 197 (2003)), the state failed to demonstrate that involuntarily medicating the defendant would significantly further important government interests and that the administration of the medication was medically appropriate for the defendant as the trial court failed to specify the anti-psychotic medication or the dosages that could be forcibly administered to the defendant. Henderson v. State, 344 Ga. App. 89, 808 S.E.2d 752 (2017).