News
RIFLE — It's been eight years and six months since Steven Michael Stagner was sentenced to serve one day to life at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo (CMHIP) for shooting seven Latino residents in Rifle on July 3, 2001.
Four of the shooting victims died.
The shooting occurred around midnight that night in the old City Market parking lot and across the street at a mobile home park, which has since been destroyed.
Stagner was found not guilty by reason of insanity in October 2001 after two psychiatric examinations found the 1977 Rifle High School graduate to be insane at the time of the shootings. One of the examinations was performed by Dr. Richard Pounds of CMHIP, the other was done by one of the country's top forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz. Dietz had also done similar evaluation on such notorious killers as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, Andrea Yates, the Texas woman who drowned her five children, would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr., and killer-cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, which were all found to be sane at the time of their crimes.
Stagner, now 51 years old, remains at CMHIP. It was determined that he suffered from multiple mental illnesses including schizophrenia, bipolar disease, and schizoaffective disorder.
According to Eunice Wolther, Public Information Officer for CMHIP, information regarding Stagner and any progress he's made while at the facility is not public record and is protected by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
What Wolther could say is that the sentence Stagner received is not unusual in these types of cases, and rehabilitation is the goal for any person committed to CMHIP, regardless of the crimes they have committed.
“Mental conditions are like diabetes in that it won't go away, but we want it to get stable,” she said.
CMHIP has an extensive recovery program with the purpose to treat and rehabilitate people with mental instability in an attempt to stabilize them, she said.
While the mental health facility is much more like a hospital than a prison, Stagner is not allowed to roam free and is still monitored by the courts. Wolther said that any sort of movement or change in placement within the facility, or any sort of change in privilege level, must first be approved by the court.
According to Garfield County court records, CMHIP requested that Stagner be allowed to attend a supervised camping trip in August 2006. The request was denied by a 9th Judicial District Court judge. That is the only request that's been made on Stagner's behalf in the eight and a half years that he's been at the facility, according to court records.
The hospital provides a large support group of social workers, nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists, among others, that work with individuals on what is called a “discharge plan.” But how long it takes to accomplish the goal of the plan could take between a couple of years to several decades, depending on the patient and their conditions.
A lot goes into each patient's treatments depending on how well the person responds to the treatment and medications, and how they respond to the support system, according to Wolther.
In “not guilty by reason of insanity” cases, Wolther said that some individuals have been released in as little as two years because they were able to get the mental condition under control, while others have remained in the hospital for more than 40 years.
“It really depends on the individual,” she said.
Four of the shooting victims died.
The shooting occurred around midnight that night in the old City Market parking lot and across the street at a mobile home park, which has since been destroyed.
Stagner was found not guilty by reason of insanity in October 2001 after two psychiatric examinations found the 1977 Rifle High School graduate to be insane at the time of the shootings. One of the examinations was performed by Dr. Richard Pounds of CMHIP, the other was done by one of the country's top forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz. Dietz had also done similar evaluation on such notorious killers as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, Andrea Yates, the Texas woman who drowned her five children, would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr., and killer-cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, which were all found to be sane at the time of their crimes.
Stagner, now 51 years old, remains at CMHIP. It was determined that he suffered from multiple mental illnesses including schizophrenia, bipolar disease, and schizoaffective disorder.
According to Eunice Wolther, Public Information Officer for CMHIP, information regarding Stagner and any progress he's made while at the facility is not public record and is protected by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
What Wolther could say is that the sentence Stagner received is not unusual in these types of cases, and rehabilitation is the goal for any person committed to CMHIP, regardless of the crimes they have committed.
“Mental conditions are like diabetes in that it won't go away, but we want it to get stable,” she said.
CMHIP has an extensive recovery program with the purpose to treat and rehabilitate people with mental instability in an attempt to stabilize them, she said.
While the mental health facility is much more like a hospital than a prison, Stagner is not allowed to roam free and is still monitored by the courts. Wolther said that any sort of movement or change in placement within the facility, or any sort of change in privilege level, must first be approved by the court.
According to Garfield County court records, CMHIP requested that Stagner be allowed to attend a supervised camping trip in August 2006. The request was denied by a 9th Judicial District Court judge. That is the only request that's been made on Stagner's behalf in the eight and a half years that he's been at the facility, according to court records.
The hospital provides a large support group of social workers, nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists, among others, that work with individuals on what is called a “discharge plan.” But how long it takes to accomplish the goal of the plan could take between a couple of years to several decades, depending on the patient and their conditions.
A lot goes into each patient's treatments depending on how well the person responds to the treatment and medications, and how they respond to the support system, according to Wolther.
In “not guilty by reason of insanity” cases, Wolther said that some individuals have been released in as little as two years because they were able to get the mental condition under control, while others have remained in the hospital for more than 40 years.
“It really depends on the individual,” she said.
