Son to father: ‘Die, die, die!’

A North Tacoma man accused of murdering his father has a history of violence and was once civilly committed to a state mental institution.

Jonathan Meline, 29, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 56-year-old Robert Meline.

According to prosecutors, Meline bludgeoned his father to death with a hatchet just before 2:00 a.m. on Oct. 25. His father was asleep in his bedroom at the time.

“The defendant’s sister was asleep downstairs and awoke to the sound of thumps on her ceiling,” the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office wrote in a statement. “She heard her father screaming and the defendant shouting, ‘Die, die die!'”

“Moments later she encountered the defendant on the stairs with a bloody hatchet in his hand. She begged him not to kill her. He told her he wouldn’t kill her but ‘had to’ kill their father.”

Meline walked to the Pierce County Jail where he turned himself in.

According to prosecutors, Meline told detectives he had planned the murder for months and bought the hatchet on June 23. He said his father had been “hurting children.”

In 2010, Melina was committed to Western State Hospital after he stole a car from a Tacoma dealership and attempted to run over a salesperson.

A diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, Meline was ruled incompetent to stand trial after a doctor determined there was “a substantial likelihood of the defendant repeating similar acts.”

Meline was released to the custody of his parents in January 2012 after doctors said he no longer posed an imminent threat to himself or others.

“Nobody at Western State has a crystal ball, but someone with serious mental health problems should be in treatment and not on our streets,” said Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist. “This case highlights the dangers posed by those with mental health issues.”

In April, KIRO Radio reported on a gap in state law that allowed some mentally ill suspects to walk free.

In a small percentage of cases, a criminal defendant can be ruled incompetent to stand trial, but too competent to be committed against their will for a prolonged period of time.

At the time, Lindquist called it “an absurd result.”

“It seems to me that if someone is not competent to stand trial, they’re very likely not safe to be in the community,” he said. “It is something that needs to be looked into and it should be fixed.”

Doctors at Western State, the largest psychiatric facility west of the Mississippi River, say that while the threshold for competency is determined by one’s ability to understand and assist in their own defense, the threshold for civil commitment is much different.

“Being incompetent doesn’t automatically mean that somebody meets the grounds for civil detainment and vice versa,” Dr. Marylouise Jones, clinical operations director at Western State Hospital, told KIRO Radio in April. “They are really two different statutes.”

A person can be committed against their will if they suffer from a “grave disability,” which prevents them from caring for their personal health and safety needs, or if they present a danger to themselves or others due to a mental disease.

Dr. Brian Waiblinger, medical director at Western State, said they cannot commit someone who suffers from a mental illness simply because they have been accused of a crime.

“It’s probably very difficult for the public, but ultimately it maintains the civil liberties of someone in a democratic society. It’s the consequence of living in a democracy. It’s a consequence of the statute,” Waiblinger said.” The net result is that you get these somewhat strange situations every once in a while,” he said. “They are not frequent, but they do happen.”

In Pierce County, where prosecutors charge roughly 6,000 felonies a year, there are only 10 such cases each year on average. A vast majority of defendants who are declared incompetent to stand trial will have their competency restored during 14 or 90-day periods in the care of Western State. That defendant will then return to face criminal charges in a court of law.

Meline pleaded not guilty Friday and was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation. He is being held on $2 million bail.