SEATTLE — One year after 80-year-old Ruth Dalton and her dog were killed in Seattle, her family is still waiting for justice, as mental illness, medication refusals, and competency rulings keep a trial out of reach.
KIRO 7 Investigates when treatment replaces trial, and care collides with the courts.
It’s a story Seattle will never forget, August 20, 2024; an ordinary morning that turned to tragedy.
80-year-old Ruth Dalton, a beloved dogwalker, was sitting in her car – surrounded by pups, and preparing to do her job.
That’s when police said a man carjacked her, forced her out, and ran her over with her own vehicle.
Doorbell video showed the attack, as some of the dogs in the car scattered, running in the road. At least one dog was still in the car, Ruth’s dog Prince.
Prince’s body was later found in a recycling bin at a nearby parked, stabbed multiple times.
More than a year later, Ruth’s family is still waiting for justice as the accused killer’s competency has come into question.
Jahmed Haynes, 48, was arrested just days later and charged with murder in the first degree, animal cruelty and assault.
KIRO 7 has reported on Haynes for decades; he is an eight-time convicted felon with two strikes under Washington state’s Persistent Offender Accountability Act. Under the law, someone convicted of three “most serious” offenses face mandatory life in prison without parole.
A KIRO 7 investigation in May 2025 found Haynes could have received a third strike more than 20-years ago, but prosecutors made him a plea deal – giving him lesser offenses in exchange for a second chance on a third strike.
According to a Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) Competency Evaluation Report, Haynes has been evaluated for trial competency six times since 2004. Those documents show he also has a history of medication refusal.
In relation to the current charges he faces for Ruth’s death, Haynes has traded jail walls for hospital halls five times in 15 months.
The first mental evaluation according to his records, was ordered in the days following his arrest for Ruth’s alleged killing.
He received the same diagnosis he has in the past, Schizophrenia and Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Doctors described his mental illness as “hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking.”
Haynes also told doctors “If I don’t take my medications, I do crazy stuff and get incarcerated,” according to that Evaluation Report.
Haynes was ordered to undergo an initial 90-day competency restoration period at Western State Psychiatric Hospital.
Records show he was “voluntarily compliant with medication,” during that time, and in December 2024, he was found competent to stand trial.
Haynes was then sent back to jail and Department of Corrections custody.
In April 2025, his competency was questioned again. Forensic Evaluators then discovered, “after his return [to jail], Mr. Haynes began refusing his prescribed medication.”
Haynes was no longer competent to stand trial, and a judge ordered he be sent back to Western State for another, initial 90-day period.
But it was unsuccessful at fully restoring his capacity to assist in his own defense, so the judge ordered a second, consecutive 90-day stay at Western State.
Throughout this process, documents detailed Haynes’ delusional thinking surrounding the charges against him. Doctors wrote that Haynes believed the video police have of Dalton’s murder, were fabricated, and believed people in the video were replaced with “mannequins manipulated via remote controls and strings.”
After that second stint, in October 2025, he was found competent, again.
“It’s a yo-yo back and forth, he’s competent, he’s not competent,” said Melanie Roberts, Ruth Dalton’s granddaughter. “Now, we’re to where we were in December [2024].”
Haynes has since been transferred back to jail.
“We don’t know if he is going to be taking his medication,” Roberts said. “If he stops it, then we’re going to get back on that merry-go-round again. And let’s face it, I’m tired of him being in control.”
The case has become a symbol of a justice system stuck in repeat, one that’s designed to protect rights but struggles when mental illness and due process collide.
“There has to be some point in time where you have to understand that someone is beyond help,” said Roberts.
All the while, Roberts has been stuck in a legal purgatory, where no one gets closure.
“I printed off every court doc I could find regarding mental competency for Haynes in your grandmother’s case,” said KIRO 7’s Elle Thomas as she slid a folder full of papers to Roberts during a sit-down interview. “How does that make you feel?”
“He had eight felonies prior to this day,” Roberts said. “This inch shouldn’t be here. It’s sad.”
“I’m sad that somebody didn’t help him before this. That somebody didn’t lay down the law and keep him locked up before he got this inch of paperwork. And I’m sad that my grandma’s not here because of this inch of paperwork,” she continued.
KIRO 7 was given access to Western State where progress is measured in months, not moments. And treatment isn’t a choice, it’s a condition of release.
“What would be kind of the recipe for restoration?” Elle asked Dr. Thomas Kinlen.
“So the main ingredient in that mix is going to be medication.
Dr. Thomas Kinlen directs forensic services for Washington’s Office of Forensic Mental Health Services (OFMHS) under DSHS’ Behavioral Health and Habilitation Administration.
“I think the biggest misunderstanding is that competency services is like the gateway to successful ongoing behavioral health treatment and recovery in the community,” Dr. Kinlen said.
“It’s really not that. Our goal is to get someone to be competent, which is assist in their defense, understand the proceedings,” he continued. “It’s not a long-term fix.”
Under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, competency to stand trial is a guaranteed right because it is tied to due process rights.
The first thing OFMHS evaluators will determine is whether they are competent or not. If they aren’t, the next question is – are they restorable?
Per Washington State law a person accused of a violent felony, like Haynes, has three consecutive opportunities to rehabilitate before the courts can pursue a civil commitment, or long-term hold at a psychiatric hospital.
“I think sometimes people feel like charges are dismissed and they can’t be refiled and this person got away with it. With the system that we have in place, it’s like, well, no, they’re civilly committed,” Dr. Kinlen said.
When asked why the state does not allow someone endless opportunities to rehabilitate, Dr. Kinlen explained it is tied to U.S. Supreme Court case, “Jackson v. Indiana.”
“What they ruled there is that you cannot hold someone indefinitely for competency to stand trial,” Dr. Kinlen said. “So, it’s a reasonable period of time. Different states use their interpretation of what a reasonable time is, and for Washington that is a year.”
However, if a person successfully rehabilitates, and then decompensates in prison and is ordered to undergo a new mental evaluation, like Haynes did – that ‘new’ evaluation is considered the first. Thus, the process effectively restarts and can continue much longer.
Dr. Kinlen said those cases are rare.
“It does need time, but you do want to make sure a person does understand what’s occurring, that they can assist in their defense, that the framework of our constitution, of our legal system does not become broken or dysfunctional so that we can continue to function as a healthy society,” Dr. Kinlen said.
The challenge with competency restoration, is mental illness is not cured, it’s treated. And there are several variables as to if a person can be rehabilitated, if the medication will work, and what combination if so.
So challenging, reaching mental clarity is essentially a coin flip.
Data obtained by KIRO 7 from DSHS, shows a roughly 55-percent success rate after an initial 90-day stay. That rate drops to 46% if a second stint is needed.
Even patients who beat the odds often relapse behind bars. One in ten are readmitted within three months.
“They go to a setting that’s not designed to be therapeutic and it, yeah, spirals,” said Michael Schueler an attorney with Seattle firm, Heyman Schueler Rain.
“Competency is fluid, one day you could be not competent, and the next day you could be competent,” Schueler said.
Schueler has no connection to the Haynes case, but as a former public defender, can provide insight.
“For folks who are found not competent, they are severely unwell, usually in the throes of active psychosis, usually unable to have reality-based conversations with their attorneys,” Schueler said. “They’re so detached from reality that they don’t understand what they did at the time.”
“When it comes to mental health issues in particular, I think it’s really important to treat the accused with compassion because unlike other kinds of acts, folks who are in the throes of mental health issues sincerely do not mean to do what they did, and that’s a hard thing to conceptualize because most folks don’t struggle with that,” Schueler continued.
Scheuler said the antipsychotic medications used to treat mental health problems are very effective at bringing people out of psychotic states. However, he also said the drugs often have severe side effects that can be permanent.
“The constitution wants to make sure that before we put someone into that situation where there could be serious, irrevocable changes to their body, there’s a process,” Scheuler said.
In rare cases, prosecutors can request a Sell Order; a court ruling that allows forced medication to restore competency. The standard comes from the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case Sell v. United States, which requires judges to weigh a defendant’s constitutional right to refuse medication against the state’s interest in prosecution.
“People don’t want to have things put into their bodies that they don’t and I think that is a very base level human instinct and desire, it’s also enshrined in the constitution because anti-psychotics, not only is it considered a privacy violation to forcibly put something in you that you don’t want, it’s actually deeper than that because it changes the way you think. And when we think about things we don’t want the government to do to us without our consent… Changing the way we view reality is kind of a baseline for that,” Scheuler said.
In Washington state, there are only about a hundred Sell Orders approved each year, according to data KIRO 7 obtained from the Department of Corrections through a public records request.
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