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> Woods was held in county jail for 428 days in total, and after a California judge deemed him mentally unfit to stand trial America's legal system at work. No

• everforward 3y ago
  That's not how that works. In California, he would need to be found guilty and only then would there be a trial about whether he was mentally well. It's also not about whether he has a mental health issue, but about whether he was capable of forming criminal intent and thus being held responsible. The shitty part of this isn't that the judges have that ability, there's a time and a place for that. The bad part is that the system thought so little of him because he was poor and homeless that he couldn't convince them of his identity, despite having a social security card and a state ID from the state he was being prosecuted in. Everyone just assumed that the guy with the money was the "real" guy, because why would he impersonate a homeless person? I don't think Woods ever could have won, no amount of documentation would have convinced everyone. It's awful that the people that finally believed him were a hospital. Then when somebody with money asked the police about it, suddenly it's credible and worth doing DNA testing on.