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Patricia Long's blue eyes had that dazed, empty stare of someone who is no longer inside herself, no longer connected to the outside.

Her smile, brief and flat, bore more sorrow than glee, directed momentarily toward the mother of the ex-husband she tried to have killed.

Long was back in court in Albuquerque this week as authorities hashed out what to do next with her, a mentally damaged and potentially dangerous woman who apparently is not much better now than when she went to prison in March 2005 for criminal solicitation of murder.

State District Judge Albert S. "Pat" Murdoch on Wednesday ordered that Long, 40, undergo a competency evaluation before he considers whether she should then undergo a 60-day forensic psychological evaluation.

That, before he considers whether she should be committed to the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, the state's mental hospital, as recommended by her probation officer.

And that, because the justice system is simply not the place to handle those whose minds have crumbled into the criminal.

Long had been a schoolteacher and Phi Beta Kappa college grad, a married woman of 16 years and a mother of three children when things began to snap.

Her attorney said she was driven to madness by her overbearing, berating husband.

But her husband, Stephen Avery, said her mental illness was already there, managed perilously with his support and the support of her family. When the family dissolved, Long's mental state dissolved as well, he said.

She sought out a hit man to kill Avery, offering $325 and the promise of a cut from her ex-husband's life insurance policy, to which she was no longer a beneficiary.

"Smother him," she said.

The hit man turned out to be an undercover Bernalillo County sheriff's detective. When she was arrested in February 2004, authorities learned she had already secured a second hit man.

Her mind was not right.

Her ex-husband said he had hoped sending Long to prison would provide her with at least a modicum of the help she needed.

But whatever help she received there - which we will never know because of confidentiality rules - was apparently not enough.

Nearly six months out of prison, she was hauled back to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque after prosecutors argued she violated probation with her continued mental issues.

A report this month from her probation officer indicates she was placed in Dismas House, a halfway house, after her release from prison in April but was discharged from there weeks later because of her "overmedicated state and her increasingly aggressive behavior toward staff."

Long was transferred to La Pasada, another treatment program, but authorities said she twice deliberately overdosed on prescription medications, presumably the antidepressants Avery says she is given.

The probation officer also reported that Long had been caught four times with the medication in her room at La Pasada.

Perhaps the treatment workers should have known Long's history with such medication - according to the officer's report, she had attempted suicide three times while in prison, all by overdosing on prescription medication.

"Due to her latest overdose, her continued aggression toward others and her ongoing mental health issues, it is this officer's strong opinion that Long can't be supervised in the community any longer," the probation officer concluded.

How it apparently was so easy for a suicidal and potentially homicidal woman to obtain medications while in treatment and incarceration is never addressed.

Avery, meanwhile, sat in the courtroom Wednesday with his mother and watched his ex-wife and would-be assassin smile.

He is worried again that Long will never get the help she needs.

He is worried about what she might do, and what the state might not do to assure his safety and that of his children.

He is worried it can't do anything at all.