Forced medication of defendants is a scary notion in the first place, and it is a power that just begs to be abused. The situation evokes memories of the Soviet Union during the cold war.
Since anyone can be institutionalized and forcibly medicated on the signature of two doctors or one doctor and one next-of-kin(at least in SC), it is difficult to imagine what greater power prosecution and LE would rightly want to have in the forcible administration of mind-altering drugs to defendants in the time before a trial.
The District Court never entered a final judgment in this case, which should have led the Court of Appeals to wonder whether it had any business entertaining petitioner's appeal. Instead, without so much as acknowledging that Congress has limited court-of-appeals jurisdiction to "appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the United States," 28 U. S. C. §1291 (emphasis added), and appeals from certain specified interlocutory orders, see §1292, the Court of Appeals proceeded to the merits of Sell's interlocutory appeal. . . . This Court's cases do not authorize appeal from the District Court's April 4, 2001, order, which was neither a "final decision" under §1291 nor part of the class of specified interlocutory orders in §1292. We therefore lack jurisdiction, and I would vacate the Court of Appeals' decision and remand with instructions to dismiss.