The Tristin Murphy Act
The Tristin Murphy Act was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Murphy’s story gained attention as the subject of the CBS News Miami documentary “Warehoused: The Life and Death of Tristin Murphy.”
Jim talks with Tristin’s mother, who was integral in bringing the law to life.
About the issue
Nearly four years after 37-year-old Tristin Murphy killed himself with a chainsaw at a South Florida prison, Gov. DeSantis acknowledged there must be a better way to deal with mentally ill individuals in the criminal justice system.
On Wednesday, he signed the Tristin Murphy Act into law. Supporters argue it is the most comprehensive reform to mental health in decades.
Murphy, a man with schizophrenia who was in and out of jail because of his mental illness before eventually being sent to prison on a littering charge, killed himself at the facility with a chainsaw on Sept. 16, 2021.
“A lot of people that interact with the justice system, the root cause is not that they’re bad people trying to harm others; it’s that they’ve got a lot of mental health problems that are leading to behavior that is antisocial,” DeSantis said during the bill signing ceremony. “And so, the extent that we can do that, and identify that, and potentially provide solutions for that, that’s going to ultimately be better for taxpayers, it’ll be better for the entire justice system, and it’ll be better for the safety of our community.”
