For nearly 24 years, Alan Alter, a 71-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War, had been unlawfully committed to a California state hospital. The commitment, was the result of a sequence of trickle-down oversights starting at the top, with the state of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and Board of Parole Hearings, all the way down to the local level with the San Diego County District Attorney’s office and Public Defender’s office. The program that allowed this to happen is called the Mentally Disordered Offender Program.