HARRISBURG — The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has corrected a decades-old flaw in state law that left severely mentally ill people behind bars indefinitely, and highlighted lingering problems for the man at the center of the case, and others like him.

The court’s September ruling in Commonwealth v. Jquan Humphrey cleared the way for judges to dismiss charges against defendants who would never be deemed competent to participate in their own trial, a longstanding point of confusion in state law.

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Pennsylvania’s Mental Health Procedures Act of 1976 protects people who may be “incompetent” to stand trial from participating in a legal process that they cannot understand. It requires the court to determine whether with treatment, those people can regain their competency and resume their case.

But the law, which legislators passed nearly 50 years ago and have not significantly updated, gives ambiguous instructions for what to do when someone is not competent and for varying reasons never will be. That lack of clarity creates special problems for people with intellectual disabilities, brain injuries, or cognitive conditions such as dementia.

Taken together, these issues with the law left people who have severe, incurable mental conditions effectively trapped behind bars, endlessly awaiting a trial they could never participate in.