It's the latest clash between the courts and state government over funding for state treatment of mentally ill people accused of crimes. In the meantime, scores of inmates whom judges have ordered into state care wait, untreated, behind bars.

Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff has appointed special prosecutors to determine whether Steve Schoenmakers, head of the state's hospital for the mentally ill, is in contempt of a court order to take an alleged bicycle thief for treatment.

The state mental hospital in Pueblo says it doesn't have room for dozens of Colorado defendants whom psychiatrists have found incompetent to stand trial. As a result, those inmates are waiting in jails.

Beverly Fulton, a first assistant Colorado attorney general, said that in early October, 77 Colorado defendants judged incompetent for trial were waiting for admission to the state mental hospital, and many of them had been in jail for months.

The situation came to a head in Denver when the hospital refused to accept alleged bicycle thief Eugene Zuniga after Judge Egelhoff ordered it to do so on June 13.

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