Two instances of police corruption that have no relevance to this thread. In neither of those cases was the psychiatrist responsible and in both cases they were released within days. Dirty cops telling lies cause all sorts of problems, that's on them.
They can lie to psychiatrists to get a temporary commit which is what happened in both of those cases, and yet again you link to something that only shows a few day temporary hold; that does not support your case. You cannot commit someone for more than a few days against their will and that fact alone demonstrates that psychiatrists do not have very much power anymore.
It varies by state, but I just looked up New York, California, and Texas and they are surprisingly uniform. Getting a 72-hour hold is pretty easy, and a psychiatrist can tell the court if s/he deems it necessary to hold for an additional 14 days (ostensibly, so they can verify that whatever medication they choose to administer has taken effect). These courts are pretty much set up to rubber stamp whatever the psychiatrist wants to do; many hospitals that have psychiatric services have these courts in the same facility. After that, although the patient has the right to leave the hospital whenever they want, but in many cases they aren't told that, or that they may need to call a lawyer to take them court in order for the judge to issue a release.
