MAD RIVER TWP. — One year after the shooting death of a local sheriff’s deputy, state legislators are considering introducing a law that would create a database accessible to law enforcement of people found not guilty by reason of insanity, said state Sen. Chris Widener, R-Springfield.

When Clark County Sheriff’s Deputy Suzanne Hopper and then-Sgt. Dusty White arrived at the trailer of Michael Ferryman at Enon Beach campground, they didn’t know Ferryman was on conditional release.

“We track sex offenders in a very confined and detailed database,” Widener said, “but those that are typically adjudicated for mental health illnesses, we don’t have a database for law enforcement officials.”

In 2001, Ferryman shot at law enforcement officers at a campground in Morgan County from the same trailer he used at Enon Beach nearly a decade later. No one was injured in the first shootout, and Ferryman was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

He spent two years in a mental institution before getting a conditional release and being allowed to move to Clark County.

On Jan. 1, 2010, Ferryman, 57, shot and killed Hopper when she and White, now a lieutenant, responded to a report of a shot fired at a neighboring trailer.

During a shootout with police that followed, Ferryman shot and injured German Twp. Officer Jeremy Blum before officers delivered a fatal shot to the gunman.

A developing piece of legislation may include something similar to the database, said state Rep. Ross McGregor, R-Springfield, but there are legal issues to consider.

“You have to be careful,” he said. “Something that seems so simple and reasonable as a database, you also have to think about people’s privacies so you have to balance a lot of things out.”

Widener said state legal counsel and researchers are currently looking into how to create such a database, possibly by including the information in the state’s criminal database for law enforcement only called the Law Enforcement Agencies Data System.

A similar database already has been created locally, said Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly, who worked with the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Clark County to create a database of people in the county who are on conditional release.

“We only have four people (in the county) but across the state there are many, many more,” Kelly said. “Ferryman came into Clark County, so we didn’t know about him.”

As of June 2011, 430 people in the state of Ohio were on conditional release after being found not guilty by reason of insanity, said Trudy Sharp, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Mental Health.

“Not guilty by reason of insanity, it gets a lot of attention but it’s actually not used very often,” she said. “It’s a very high standard and it is not used that often. When it is used, there’s only a percentage that it’s successful in.”

In Clark County, there were only two successful NGRI defenses in 2011, said Prosecutor Andy Wilson.

“It’s an affirmative defense,” he said. “It basically says the person is not guilty because of a mental disease of defect and the lack of ability to know the the difference between right and wrong.

“It’s not saying they didn’t do it. It’s saying they did it but because of this mental disease, they’re not responsible.”

The insanity plea is used in approximately one percent of all court cases and only successful about 25 percent of the time, according to an oft-cited study from the 1990s.

Once a person found not guilty because of mental illness is placed on conditional release, that person’s monitoring includes several entities such as the local addiction, drug and mental health board, the courts, the treating agency, the state and a forensic monitor who acts as a liaison among all of the groups.

Following the shooting at Enon Beach, the state mental health department met with all 42 forensic monitors in the state to review conditional release processes and found that most of the required activites were happening as they should.

In the inquiry that followed the shooting. however, investigators discovered that Ferryman had been dodging his monthly mental health check-ins for 10 months, stopped taking his medicine and started behaving erratically. He had acquired a gun with the help of his girlfriend, Maria Blessing — who is now serving five years in prison for complicity to weapons under disability and obstruction of justice.

Mental Health Services of Clark County had internally documented that it had not met with Ferryman in that time but did not report that to the Morgan County court. The forensic monitor assigned to the case, Dr. Kara Manciani, told state investigators she had difficult obtaining the monthly reports from Clark County and that the Morgan County courts never scheduled a hearing.

Dr. James Perry, director of MHS, did not return a call for comment and Manciani could not be reached for comment.

Over the last year, the state Department of Mental Health has made changes to its forensic procedures manual to help close such loopholes, said Sharp. That includes requiring monitors to send certified notices to the court to schedule a hearing when needed and ongoing education for those involved in conditional release.

Forensic monitors are also required to notify the chief executive officer of the treating agency, the state mental health department and the courts if any reports or hearings fall behind schedule.

“If there’s any red flag now, it goes out to several people,” said Sharp. “With certified mail there can be no question that the court was notified.”

Soon a database will come online that will require forensic monitors to make digital reports.

“It’ll have more checks and balances, meaning that the forensic monitors (will) have to fill in certain fields such as court dates, treatment updates, before they can submit those things,” she said.

The department is interested in a conversation about the possibility of creating a database of people on conditional release and sharing information with law enforcement.

While state and local agencies are taking steps to improve the system, it remains unclear if anything could have prevented the incidents at Enon Beach on New Year’s Day.

“Could we have prevented his girlfriend from giving him a gun?” asked Sharp. “Likely we couldn’t. But we must do our best every day to make sure that people receive the treatment they need and that their safety and the safety of the community is a priority.”

Staff writers Everdeen Mason and Josh Sweigart contributed to this report.