by Linda Stein
Montgomery and Chester County cases highlight flashpoints with Pennsylvania’s involuntary commitment law.
Is it too easy to involuntarily commit someone to a mental institution in Pennsylvania? Some people think so, but the state legislature is considering legislation to make it even easier.
Around 2:30 p.m. on March 11, around 20 law enforcement officers, including police and Montgomery County detectives, walked through the sliding glass doors of the Staybridge Suites in Royersford with guns drawn. Hotel guest Sean Connolly was at the front desk to get a new key for his room because his key stopped working.
“Get down on your knees!” the officers yelled, and he complied.
Connolly noticed the officers’ body cameras were not on, and they did not show him a warrant when he asked.
When he asked why he was being arrested, they mentioned his social media posts.
What followed his arrest was a trip into Pennsylvania’s mental health system. He was involuntarily committed through a 302 process. Connolly, 47, and his estranged wife, Lisa, are divorcing. Her request for a protection-from-abuse order (PFA) appears to have precipitated the involuntary commitment (302) action against Connolly.
It accused him of being “mentally unstable,” believing “people are after him.” The form said he owned two guns.
Lisa Connolly declined to comment for this article.
Connolly, a general contractor and former Montgomery County sheriff’s officer who served in the Army and National Guard, was staying at hotels while he looked for a new place to live.
“My background is in electronic security investigations and legal research,” he said.
Connolly also claims he is a “protected federal witness and whistleblower” for the Securities and Exchange Commission. A spokesman for the SEC declined to comment.
Officers transported him to Building 50 at the site of the closed state mental hospital in Norristown. They took his belt, shoes, crucifix, and rosary. They’d already taken his wallet and cell phone, he said. Connolly told his captors that he’d reported “public corruption” in Montgomery County and that he’d uncovered child sex abuse.
He also looked into the election process in Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester counties. The same Montgomery County lawyer, John Marlatt, is solicitor for the 302 process and also for the Board of Elections.
Megan Alt, a county spokeswoman, did not respond when asked to comment.
When Connolly saw the 302 (commitment) papers, he claimed officials “cherry-picked stuff out of previous emails that I cc’d with federal agencies, the FBI, the DOJ, the SEC” for the warrant. Connolly was admitted to Brooke Glen Behavioral Health Hospital in Fort Washington, where he declined treatment, including psychotropic medicines. He continued to insist that he was sane.
Connolly has websites excoriating Gov. Josh Shapiro and home builder Toll Brothers, which he’s sued. Asked about the apparently antisemitic content on his Shapiro site, Connolly denied that it was meant to be antisemitic.
“I’m not antisemitic,” he said. “I’m not racist. I have Jewish family members, blood family members,” he said. “Jesus was Jewish.”
Under Pennsylvania law, a 302 allows someone to be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for 120 hours (five days), which is then followed by a 303 hearing, which Connolly was given. However, he said it was with no notice and without his lawyer present. Connolly refused to attend the hearing. The 303 hearing can extend the commitment for another 20 days.
However, Lisa Connolly testified at the 303 hearing that Connolly was dangerous and said he sent multiple text messages to her and their daughters. One said that she was “possessed by the devil.” Also, she said Connolly came to the house she shares with their twin 18-year-old daughters, even though he was not permitted to be there. But she also admitted he’d never physically harmed her.
In another 302 case, Leslie Morgan, a Radnor businesswoman, said in May 2022, a 302 was used to remove her 90-year-old mother, who weighed less than 100 pounds and had never been violent, from the Chester County home that she shared with her husband of more than four decades.
Before that, Orphans Court Judge Katherine B.L. Platt, now retired, had issued an opinion finding that Morgan’s two siblings had allegedly conspired to take control of her parents’ wealth and home. The siblings were never charged criminally, but Platt found that they had wielded undue influence over their parents, who were cognitively incapacitated, and that any documents that her parents signed, such as one transferring the deed to their house, were moot.
“My mother was 302’d and never even had a speeding ticket or a DUI,” said Morgan. “I will never forgive the monsters that further abused my parents and especially using the 302 as a weapon to remove my mother and then try to capture my dad — I stopped that one — so that my siblings could potentially sell the house or whatever their plan was, since they had not returned ownership,” said Morgan.
“My mother was removed to a nearby hospital. (She was) in the ER for six days with no room. She just had a curtain. Within 72 hours, she was medically compliant,” said Morgan.
“I would have cared for her, no problem. Why the cloak of darkness?” asked Morgan.
Without notifying Morgan, her mother’s court-appointed guardian committed the elderly woman to a psychiatric ward and later a memory care unit, she said.
“They gave my mother so much medication that it measured out for a 6-foot-four-inch man. She was 5-feet. She was near comatose. Her legs swelled up so fiercely that her fragile, elderly skin broke apart, and she developed deep wounds.
“I was shattered, my father missed her beyond words. We all did,” said Morgan. “My father lost weight. He faded faster. They would not allow him to visit on a regular basis with me or a helper.”
Her father has also subsequently passed away.
Platt had signed a petition to assign a lawyer to recover the funds. However, the final probate settlement remains pending in Orphans Court, so Morgan was limited in what she could disclose.
Asked to comment about the 302 system, Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former Montgomery County district attorney, county commissioner, and state attorney general, was blunt.
“Taking someone’s liberty, and property like guns, should require some judicial review first. I don’t like the idea of people being locked up on the say-so of another, perhaps biased person, without a judge of some level (who is) able to weed out the obviously unmerited filings,” said Castor.
The Pennsylvania state House held a committee hearing last year on modernizing the 302 law, which dates to 1976. Majority Whip Rep. Michael Schlossberg (D-Lehigh) said the goal is to make the 302 process easier by changing the wording from “clear and present danger” to “predictable psychological deterioration.” Minnesota and Arizona use this standard, he said.
Broad + Liberty asked whether the legislators planned to make sure that 302s are not misused.
“Respectfully, two cases is not indicative of a system that is ripe for abuse,” Schlossberg said. “Now, that does not mean that we should hand out 302s as a first resort. It’s a last resort for a slew of reasons, including the disruption to the individual’s life, employment, autonomy, and trust in the mental health system.”
“Clearly, these cases should not happen, and when they do, anyone who intentionally violates the clear intent of the law should be prosecuted, and we should always look for ways to improve how this system operates,” he added. “One of the things that my proposed revisions do is ensure that: AOT (assisted outpatient treatment) is incorporated into the 302 process.”
Connolly’s lawyer, Rene Mazer, filed motions in Common Pleas Court and a writ of habeas corpus in federal court on his behalf. In court papers, she said authorities violated the 302 rules, that he was being “held under a purported state court commitment that was imposed without the procedural safeguards required by the Due Process Clause.”
No doctor came to examine him until after Mazer filed the habeas corpus petition on March 17, Mazer said. In court filings, Mazer stated the staff pressured Connolly, who insists that he is sane, to take psychotropic medications.
After a hearing, Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Saltz ruled March 25 that Connolly should be released.
“I believe powerful people would like to silence and discredit Sean,” said Mazer, when asked why this happened.
While Connolly is happy to be free, he said what happened to him was “very traumatizing.”
“I was essentially a political prisoner,” Connolly said. “I exposed bad people by telling the truth.”
Michael Bootier, the lawyer for Brooke Glen, said the hospital “cannot comment on individual patients,” but noted that it is a judge or a court officer, not the hospital, that determines involuntary commitments.
“Brooke Glen remains committed to providing high-quality care to teens and adults with complex mental health needs.”
Linda Stein is a Philadelphia-area journalist.
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Montgomery and Chester County cases highlight flaws in Pennsylvania’s involuntary commitment law.
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