Lenny Ray Cornia, who was shot to death in his home Saturday after allegedly lunging at police with a kitchen knife, should not have been condemned to a life of psychotic torment nor should he have died at the hands of an officer ill prepared to deal with his mental illness. Cornia was the victim of an insidious brain disease that was aggravated by weak mental illness treatment laws.

People with untreated severe mental illnesses are society’s castaways left to fend for themselves in heavy psychosis on our city streets and in our jails. While the story of Lenny Cornia is not unique, it is tragic and completely preventable. Incidents like this are seen with increasing frequency around the country and have been aptly dubbed suicide by cop in which individuals with mental illness bait police into killing them, fulfilling their death wish.

This is not surprising since the mentally ill are 10 to 15 times more likely to commit suicide than the general public. Due to inadequate treatment laws, cops have been forced into the untenable position of street-corner psychiatrist, and more often than not our most vulnerable citizens feel the cold snap of handcuffs than the caring arms of a well-trained psychiatric team.

What is particularly egregious about Cornia’s case is that Utah’s Legislature had the opportunity in February to protect the state’s mentally ill from the dire consequences of untreated brain disease with

SB 200. Legislators never voted on SB 200 because they were not willing to fund services for the mentally ill. This is most surprising given that last year Utahans witnessed firsthand one of the most devastating consequences of nontreatment when Sergei Babarin and Lisa Duy, who also suffered from untreated mental illness, shot and killed innocent victims. Those tragedies were caused by Utah’s outdated law that requires a person be imminently dangerous before medical care is provided, even if that individual has refused treatment in the first place. In other words, nothing could be done to help Sergei and Lisa until it was too late and they had their fingers on the triggers of their guns.

Utah is one of only a handful of states around the country that requires imminent dangerousness. None of Utah’s six neighboring states have such a requirement. It is estimated that the change in Utah’s law would have ensured that 100 individuals who are most in need of treatment for severe mental illness would have received it this year. But, changing the law would not have been enough. There must also be a fiscal commitment to provide the medication and services that will keep these individuals well and prevent them from falling victim to the revolving consequences of untreated mental illness: homelessness, suicide, incarceration or violence.

In the end, changing the law and investing in services would have saved money wasted on preventable, costly hospitalizations and the jailing of individuals who are forced to spiral to the depths of their illness.