Coley v. Clinton

McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge.

Appellants, two former inmates of an Arkansas state hospital, appeal from the district court’s judgment dismissing their complaint and refusing to certify this lawsuit as a class action. Appellants sought to represent a class consisting of all those criminal defendants committed to the Arkansas state mental hospital when found incompetent to stand trial or when acquitted by reason of mental disease or defect. On behalf of themselves and the class, appellants challenged, as violative of the due process and equal protection guarantees of the fourteenth amendment, the…