Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams and District Attorney Michael Rourke drew national attention this month with viral claims that a dangerous man was set free from jail because of a 2024 change to Colorado’s mental competency laws — but reality is more complicated than the officials’ soundbites, experts said.
The 21-year-old cognitively impaired man’s release — and subsequent new arrest this week for allegedly carrying a gun on a college campus — highlight longstanding failures at the intersection of Colorado’s criminal justice and mental health care systems, complex and nuanced issues that largely predate the 2024 law change targeted by Weld County officials.
The Weld County sheriff’s warning prompted criticism from tech billionaire Elon Musk (“This is insane”) and a reply from Gov. Jared Polis (“Absolutely unacceptable”), as well as a spate of news stories.
Here’s what court records and experts revealed about the case:
Who is Ephraim Debisa?
Ephraim Debisa is an intellectually disabled man who has been in trouble with law enforcement since he was a boy.
At 13, he was accused of inappropriate sexual contact with students at school, and, at 14, he was charged with starting fights at school, according to a 2023 extreme risk protection order filed in Larimer County that sought to prevent him from legally owning guns.
The arrests continued as he grew older, with charges of burglary, robbery, menacing with a weapon, and several arrests for allegations of assault, according to court records. He was armed with guns during at least two incidents, prosecutors alleged.
Across the cases, authorities found that Debisa was mentally incompetent and unable to go through the court process. That means evaluators found he had a cognitive impairment severe enough that he either could not have a rational and factual understanding of the court proceedings, or he could not assist his attorneys in his own defense.
What is competency?
The competency process is designed to protect the constitutional rights of people who are mentally ill or developmentally disabled by ensuring they are not prosecuted for crimes when they are too sick or too disabled to understand the court process and to help defend themselves.
The concept is rooted in a person’s constitutional right to due process and a fair trial.
Defendants who are mentally incompetent cannot be tried for crimes — rather, the criminal prosecutions are paused while defendants go through treatment aimed at restoring them to competency. If defendants can’t be restored to competency, the cases against them must be dismissed.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 ruled that defendants who are incompetent and unlikely to be restored in the foreseeable future — that is, unlikely to improve with treatment — cannot be held in jail and must be released or civilly committed, said Jack Johnson, an attorney and public policy liaison at Disability Law Colorado.
“We don’t commit people indefinitely based on their mental health,” said Kate Coffman, an attorney who represented Debisa in his extreme risk protection order. “And I think that could be a slippery slope if we were to change that.”
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What did Weld County officials claim?
Earlier this month, the Weld County Sheriff’s Office released a statement on the social media site X that warned that Debisa was being released from jail. The sheriff’s office included a video that it said showed a shirtless Debisa in a fistfight.
The post warned that Debisa was dangerous and would be freed because he had been found incompetent to proceed and unlikely to be restored in the criminal case related to the fight, as well as a second case of burglary.
Reams, the sheriff, blamed a 2024 change in state law for Debisa’s release.
“Colorado HB 24-1034 has created a crisis where very dangerous individuals are being released to the street to reoffend over and over,” he said in the post, which was viewed more than 127,000 times on X.
Rourke, the district attorney, reiterated that position in a subsequent news conference and interview with The Denver Post.
“The incompetency and not-restorable definition in statute have been weaponized in the criminal justice system,” he said during the Sept. 10 news conference, calling the process a “get out of jail free card.”
What changed in 2024?
The 2024 changes to state competency law in House Bill 24-1034 set up deadlines for defendants’ release from custody if they are continually incompetent, and made it more difficult for district attorneys to challenge an evaluator’s finding that a defendant is unlikely to be restored to competency.
The law requires a judge to hold a hearing when a defendant is found to be unlikely to be restored and to dismiss the case if the judge agrees with the evaluator’s opinion.
The law also sets up a new legal presumption that the evaluator’s opinion is correct. The district attorney can challenge the evaluator’s opinion during the hearing and try to convince the judge to send the defendant for competency restoration services (if the defendant had not already received them), but must overcome the presumption that favors the evaluator.
“I want to at least have the ability for a court to make an effort to try to restore someone to competency when we have victims of violent crime,” Rourke said. “The law (is) requiring us to throw up our hands and say, ‘Nothing we can do.’”
The law change was intended to cut down on the number of people who cycle through the competency restoration process repeatedly, sometimes being held in custody longer than is constitutional, Johnson said.
“This is one of the ways DAs can try to, for lack of a better word, manipulate the system and keep trying to restore someone even after it’s clear they are not restorable,” Johnson said. “And by doing that… you get into this gray area of the constitution where, as long as you are trying to restore them, you can keep them in custody.”
People with traumatic brain injuries, intellectual disabilities or conditions like dementia are not going to respond to competency treatment, no matter how many times they go through it, said state Rep. Judy Amabile, D-Boulder, who sponsored HB 24-1034.
A 2023 Denver Post investigation into competency found that over a six-year span, 407 people repeated competency treatment despite a finding in their initial case that they were unlikely to be restored. Only 31 of those defendants — 7% — were later found competent after that initial finding.
Rourke said the 2024 changes to the law unduly handicap his office.
“I don’t believe there is not a chance it can be done,” he said of restoring a defendant to competency after a finding of permanent incompetency. “…I am left at the mercy of one evaluator who says he is not restorable.”
Rourke acknowledged, however, that his office can request a second evaluation.
The 2024 law change is designed to trigger an off-ramp out of the criminal justice system for such defendants that shifts them into treatment and care, Johnson said.
“I would say one evaluator starts the process, but the DAs can still get more evaluations, they can still bring in evidence, they can ask for a contested hearing where they challenge the finding of incompetence,” Johnson said. “But it is a fair assessment to say there is now, after one evaluation, the requirement we try to get his person sorted out, rather than keep them on the waitlist, keep trying to restore them and keep trying to evaluate them.”
What didn’t change in 2024 is the longstanding law that requires that defendants who are permanently incompetent be released from custody, said James Karbach, a spokesman for the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender.
In the past, that release from custody often — but not always — came with a dismissal of the criminal charges, Johnson said.
“It was understood that folks who were found unlikely to be restored in the foreseeable future, since you are not keeping them in custody, why are we having pending criminal charges?” he said. “It didn’t make sense to anyone.”
The new law mandates that the charges be dismissed in part because pending charges for a person who was released had at times blocked individuals from placement in care facilities, Amabile said.
“It leaves them in this legal limbo where you can’t be tried, and you still have these charges outstanding,” she said.
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Why wasn’t Debisa civilly committed?
When a defendant’s case is dismissed because of permanent incompetence, judges can consider whether the defendant should be civilly committed for involuntary mental health treatment.
Colorado has a narrow definition for who qualifies for a civil commitment. For a person to be certified for a short- or long-term commitment — involuntary mental health care — they must suffer from a mental health disorder, and, as a result of that disorder, be either a danger to themselves or others or be gravely disabled.
State law says that an intellectual or developmental disability alone is not enough to qualify a person for a civil commitment.
That’s a purposeful division, Amabile said. The certification system — which includes both inpatient and outpatient care — is designed to stabilize patients until they are well enough to voluntarily accept care, at which point they are discharged. The process for people with intellectual disabilities is purposely set up to be less restrictive and provide longer-term support.
“If you have a person with a developmental disability, taking them to a treatment center for a mental health disorder doesn’t make sense,” Johnson said. “That’s not the purpose of this system. It would be like if I had a broken arm and you took me to a cardiologist.”
What other options are there upon release?
An incompetent person who doesn’t qualify for a civil commitment can still be connected to care or a residential facility when their criminal case is dismissed.
State law gives judges the ability to delay a dismissal for 35 days in order to give officials the opportunity to put a plan in place.
That delay happened in Debisa’s case, but it is unclear what avenues officials pursued during that time frame. Rourke said in his news conference that the Weld County Attorney’s Office determined Debisa did not qualify as having a “legal disability.”
Karin McDougal, deputy county attorney, said in an email that she could not comment on the case because it involved an individual’s personal health information.
Weld County officials did not appoint Bridges of Colorado, a program aimed at connecting criminal defendants with mental illness to support and care, to Debisa’s case. The program employs court liaisons who are experts in working with defendants in the competency process and who aim to connect such defendants to care and resources.
Bridges liaisons can work with a defendant for 90 days after a criminal case is dismissed, said executive director Jennifer Turner. The program’s employees have built connections across the state and are appointed to the majority — but not all — competency cases, she said.
The liaisons can — and have — helped coordinate between the health care and criminal justice systems to ensure that defendants released for incompetency end up in stable situations, she said.
“The success stories aren’t out there as much as those instances where something in the system does go wrong,” she said. “I have witnessed judges, defense counsel, prosecution, Bridges, social workers… come together. …There are so many stories that aren’t hitting the media where this problem is being successfully and intentionally addressed.”
What happened to Debisa after his release?
Debisa was arrested Wednesday after police say he brought a gun on campus at the University of Northern Colorado.
He was charged with trespassing, unlawful possession of a weapon on school grounds and carrying a concealed weapon. He is being held on a $1 million bond.
He will now start the court process — and competency evaluation process — again.