Report finds ODMHSAS far short of compliance on Briggs lawsuit settlement

OKLAHOMA CITY (Sept. 26, 2025) – While the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (ODMHSAS) has made some improvements in the wake of a landmark class-action lawsuit settlement, a progress report released today indicates much more work must be done to ensure compliance with the consent decree in Briggs v. Friesen. Under that agreement, ODMHSAS must take steps to provide timely court-ordered competency restoration services for some pretrial defendants who have been deemed incompetent to stand trial and avoided accountability for more than a year in county jails.

The report notes there has been progress under the leadership of the interim ODMHSAS commissioner, retired Rear Admiral Gregory Slavonic. In June, he succeeded the disastrous tenure of former commissioner Allie Freisen.

Attorney General Gentner Drummond said the report was alarming.

“There are encouraging signs here, but the stark fact is that it will take tremendous effort to undo the failings of Admiral Slavonic’s predecessor, whom the state Legislature was forced to fire after months of Gov. Stitt’s inexplicable refusal to do so,” he said. “The consent decree that my office helped broker will save the state untold millions of dollars, but it is critical that the Department of Mental Health actually comply with the plan. As the Legislature has acknowledged, this will require an investment to ODMHSAS to help redevelop resources that have withered under the Stitt Administration."

In a Sept. 26 letter accompanying the report to U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell, court consultants John Petrila, Dr. Neil Gowensmith and Dr. Darren Lish point out that it remains unclear how many people are still in county jails awaiting transfer for competency restoration services.

 “These data points are central to nearly every aspect of the Consent Decree, and confusion about their accuracy casts reasonable doubt as to the reliability and accuracy of more nuanced or sophisticated data that the Department reports,” the consultants wrote. “Given these challenges, as well as many others that are described in detail in this report and its appendices, we believe that ODMHSAS under Admiral Slavonic’s leadership has devoted considerable effort to the Decree. However, despite this effort, in our view it has not used ‘Best Efforts’ as defined by the Decree in a number of instances in their attempts to comply with the Consent Decree. Despite the change in culture and the evidence of overall improvement due to the leadership of Admiral Slavonic, we find the lack of Best Efforts to be Material Violations of the Consent Decree.”

There are bright spots, however. The consultants credited Slavonic’s leadership with “bringing the Department into compliance with some of the Decree’s mandates, introducing changes in the culture at the Oklahoma Forensic Center (OFC), and showing improvement (though there is still much work to do) in the Department’s responsiveness to our requests for information and materials.”