A Fort Worth man’s recent punishment for making threatening phone calls while experiencing a psychotic episode shines a light on the way Tarrant County treats mentally ill offenders. Dylan Lofton was recently sentenced to 10 years of probation for the felony offense of calling Tarrant County Commissioner Manny Ramirez in March 2025, making racial slurs, and threatening the commissioner with harm.
When officers traced the call to Lofton’s home and arrived to arrest him, the licensed attorney and one-time local Democratic party activist claimed to have been born in Ireland, calling himself by a different name and speaking with an Irish accent. Despite these apparent signs of psychological instability, plus other indications reported by Lofton’s friends and relatives in the months before his offense, Lofton was arrested and, after a cursory mental health examination, placed in county jail, where he remained for most of the next year.
Lofton, who has since been formally diagnosed with schizophrenia, will have to stay out of trouble for the next 10 years or face jail if he violates the terms of his probation. Those terms include wearing an ankle monitor and avoiding specific locations, including Tarrant County courthouses and sub-courthouses. Lofton’s mother, Crystal Ledet of Northwest Fort Worth, feels her son’s punishment is harsher than is warranted by the offense.
Ledet suspects that Lofton’s sentence was influenced by Commissioner Ramirez’s position and power. More broadly, she said, she’s been made aware of how common it is for mentally ill people to be treated as criminals and incarcerated rather than treated.
“I want people to understand how people are being treated who are mentally ill in Tarrant County,” she said.
Ramirez did not respond to a request for comment.
A look at a recent high-profile case involving another Tarrant County offender can help illuminate whether mentally ill defendants receive fairness. That offender is Robert Morris, the co-founder and former head pastor at Southlake‘s Gateway mega-church. After pleading guilty last fall in an Oklahoma court to five counts of child sexual abuse, Morris was sentenced to six months in jail and nine and a half years of probation. Morris, who also had to register as a sex offender and pay $270,000 restitution, was released from jail March 31.
Neither Morris nor Lofton formally employed insanity as a legal defense. If they had, they’d be members of a very small group. Fewer than 1% of criminal defendants plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and only about a quarter of those who try it are successful. The overwhelming majority are ruled sane by the state and tried as criminals.
Like all states, Texas law provides for an insanity defense, but it’s rarely applied. At any given time, the state mental hospital system has only about 300 patients admitted under the state code governing offenders acquitted by reason of insanity. Tarrant County sends between 10 and 50 people to the state mental health system under the relevant state criminal code in a typical year.
Lofton’s year in jail is not unusual for mentally ill people accused of crimes. The Dallas-based Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute estimates that 34% of the inmate population in Texas has mental health disorders.
For now, Lofton faces a long haul to clear his record by completing a 10-year probation. He and his family will have to pay fees for probation, the ankle monitor, and GPS tracking. He also may face additional charges related to a phone call allegedly placed to a member of U.S. Congress at the same time as Ramirez was called.
Until then, Ledet remains steadfast in her opinion that her son’s offense was “way over-prosecuted,” and she is equally concerned about what happens to defendants who don’t have her son’s advantages of a clean prior record and a supportive family with the means to defend him.
“I’m not just fighting for my son,” Ledet said. “I’m fighting for other people.”
