Darrell V. McGraw, Jr.
Kristine A. Burdette, Esq.
Attorney General
Frances C. Whiteman, Esq.
Heather D. Foster
Whiteman, Burdette & Radman
Assistant Attorney General Fairmont, West Virginia
Charleston, West Virginia Attorneys for Appellant
Attorneys for Appellee
The Opinion of the Court was delivered PER CURIAM.
JUSTICE MAYNARD dissents
and reserves the right to file a dissenting opinion.
JUSTICE ALBRIGHT concurs and reserves the right to file a concurring opinion.
2. “No person may be subjected to trial on a criminal charge when, by
virtue of mental incapacity, the person is unable to consult with his attorney and to assist in
the preparation of his defense with a reasonable degree of rational understanding of the
nature and object of the proceedings against him.” Syllabus Point 1, State v. Milam, 159
W.Va. 691, 226 S.E.2d 433 (1976).
3. “To be competent to stand trial, a defendant must exhibit a sufficient
present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding
and a rational, as well as factual, understanding of the proceedings against him.” Syllabus
Point 2, State v. Arnold, 159 W.Va. 158, 219 S.E.2d 922 (1975) overruled on other grounds
by State v. Demastus, 165 W.Va. 572, 270 S.E.2d 649 (1980).
Per Curiam:
The appellant Gary Wayne Kent appeals his first degree murder conviction and
subsequent life-without-mercy sentence. Following his conviction, the appellant filed a
motion for a new trial asserting, inter alia, that he lacked the competency to stand trial. We
find that the circuit court erred in not granting the appellant's motion. Therefore, we
overturn the appellant's conviction.
(See footnote 1)
On July 29, 1998, appellant's counsel filed a motion to have the appellant
psychologically and psychiatrically examined. The circuit court granted the motion and the
appellant was taken from the Marion County Correctional Center to William R. Sharpe, Jr.
Hospital (hereinafter “Sharpe Hospital” or “Sharpe”).
When the appellant first arrived at Sharpe Hospital, he was diagnosed as suffering from “serious depression, suicidal ideation, severe mood swings, anhedonia,” and “an inappropriate desire to be punished secondary to depression.”
On September 29, 1998, forensic psychiatrist Dr. John D. Justice and a team
of mental health care providers evaluated the appellant for his competency to stand trial.
During the evaluation, Dr. Justice observed that the appellant had racing thoughts with an
inability to focus and that the appellant reported hearing voices. Dr. Justice also found that
the appellant had “persecutory paranoid beliefs,” difficulty concentrating, and memory
difficulties; he also found that the appellant lacked the “motivation presently to help himself
in the legal process.” The appellant was also evaluated for malingering and by all indications
was found not to be faking the symptoms of his mental illness although the appellant does
not consider himself mentally ill. (See footnote 2)
The appellant has a well-documented history of mental illness. The appellant
was well-known in his community for his incendiary letters to the local papers, pontificating
on the “problems of black employment in the Fairmont community.” The appellant also had
a grandiose scheme of owning property that left him $15,000.00 in debt to local rental
agencies. The appellant's bipolar disorder further led him to feel entitled to these real estate
properties without having to pay for them.
In 1993, the appellant took employees of a local hotel hostage because he believed the hotel persecuted African-Americans in particular and the appellant specifically. The appellant believed that the employees of the hotel were conspiring to force him out of his job and into bankruptcy.
After being taken into police custody in 1993, a psychiatrist, who examined the
appellant, diagnosed him as having a “very severe bipolar illness with symptoms of manic
grandiosity isolating with depression.” In 1993, a psychologist also diagnosed the appellant
as having a bipolar disorder with delusional and paranoid symptoms; the psychologist stated
that the appellant had previously suffered from periods of “manic grandiosity” alternating
with “a history of major depression.” The appellant also has “a history of persecutory
paranoid beliefs.”
According to the psychiatrist who evaluated the appellant in 1993, the appellant
suffered from a disorder that was “manifested by unstable pathological states.” The same
psychiatrist also stated that “[e]uphoria, grandiosity, [and] impulsive generosity can change
into hopelessness, anergia, and black suicidality.”
In his October 5, 1998 report to the circuit court, Dr. Justice diagnosed the
appellant as having a history of “bipolar affective disorder, mixed state as well as a delusion
disorder, paranoid type.” Dr. Justice stated that the appellant was not currently competent
to stand trial in his untreated medical condition. Dr. Justice recommended that the appellant
needed two to six months of in-house treatment in Sharpe's forensic program for competency
restoration. In the competency program, the appellant would receive counseling,
psychotropic medications, including mood stabilizers and possibly anti-psychotics, and
education about the legal process.
On October 16, 1998, the circuit court found the appellant was not competent
to stand trial at the time and ordered that the appellant remain at Sharpe Hospital to receive
the treatments recommended by Dr. Justice. The appellant remained at Sharpe and began to
receive the recommended treatments.
On February 19, 1999, the appellant's treatment team at Sharpe reported to the
circuit court that the appellant was competent to stand trial. In their report, the competency
team recommended that the appellant continue on his current medication regime and that
local mental health care providers continue to monitor and counsel the appellant after he
returned to the Marion County Correctional Center.
On March 30, 1999, the Marion County Prosecutor's Office moved to have the
appellant evaluated by Dr. Thomas Adamski, a forensic psychiatrist, and by Dr. William
Fremouw, a forensic psychologist. The circuit court granted the prosecutor's motion.
On April 4, 1999, Dr. Adamski interviewed the appellant for two hours. Dr.
Adamski found that the appellant was competent to stand trial. Further, Dr. Adamski opined
that the appellant did not suffer from any “symptoms suggestive of psychosis or manic
depressive illness.” Dr. William Fremouw, a forensic psychologist, also evaluated the
appellant and found him competent to stand trial. Dr. Freemouw, however, could not make
a conclusive diagnosis of whether the appellant had a mental illness because, in his opinion,
the medications prescribed for the appellant mostly likely controlled the symptoms of any
disorder that the appellant might have.
On June 23, 1999, the appellant was released from Sharpe Hospital and
returned to the Marion County Correctional Center.
On September 27, 1999, the appellant's jury trial began in circuit court. During
the trial, the appellant rarely spoke with his counsel.
(See footnote 3)
According to appellant's counsel, the
appellant refused to take an active role in his own defense. His counsel advised him to look
at the jury; the appellant refused. When his counsel asked the appellant questions related to
his defense, the appellant did not answer or would answer questions in a seemingly
nonsensical manner.
On October 1, 1999, the jury found the appellant guilty of murder. Because
of the appellant's depressed manner and withdrawn state, appellant's counsel requested that
Dr. Justice meet with the appellant. Dr. Justice visited the appellant in jail and found that the
appellant was depressed, had suicidal thoughts, was subject to crying spells, and suffered
from insomnia. On October 3, 1999, Dr. Justice saw the appellant again and found the
appellant to be “very talkative” and “very angry” with an expansive affect. Suspecting that
the appellant's bipolar symptoms were “breaking through,” Dr. Justice prescribed a sedative
to calm the appellant's racing thoughts and other “break through” symptoms.
On October 4, 1999, appellant's counsel filed a motion to have the appellant
reexamined for his competency to stand trial. On October 4, 1999, the circuit court ordered
the appellant taken back to Sharpe Hospital. On October 6, 1999, Dr. Justice discovered that
the appellant had not been receiving his prescribed medications.
(See footnote 4)
That same day, the circuit
court ordered a retrospective evaluation to determine the appellant's competency at trial.
On December 3, 1999, appellant's counsel filed additional post-trial motions.
The pleadings included a motion for a new trial because the appellant “was not competent
to stand trial.”
On January 7, 2000, the circuit court held a hearing to address the appellant's
post-trial motions, including the issue of the appellant's competency. Also at the January 7,
2000 hearing, the appellant filed additional motions for acquittal or a new trial.
At the hearing, the chief jail administrator of the Marion County Correctional
Center testified that after returning to the Marion County Correctional Center from Sharpe
Hospital to stand trial, the appellant refused to go to a local mental health care provider so
that his prescriptions could be refilled. Despite the appellant's having spent eight months in
Sharpe Hospital for treatment with the goal of being restored to competency, the Marion
County Correctional Center Authority failed to contact the circuit court, the prosecutor's
office, or appellant's counsel about the appellant's lack of medication. According to jail
records, the appellant last received his prescribed medicine on August 5, 1999, over a month
before his jury trial. At the January 2000 hearing, the circuit court took judicial notice of the
correctional center's obligation to provide prescribed medical care including medication.
Also at the January 7, 2000 hearing, Dr. Justice reported to the circuit court
that during the trial, the appellant had experienced many of the same symptoms that he had
manifested before being taken to Sharpe. According to Dr. Justice, the appellant was
depressed, had difficulty blocking out sounds, his mind was racing, had difficulty focusing,
and the trial proceedings occurred too quickly for the appellant to understand. Dr. Justice
also found that the appellant was afraid of his attorneys and that he had given up on his
defense. Dr. Justice further found that the appellant believed people in the courtroom could
read his mind, and that the appellant believed he could read the minds of others.
Dr. Justice testified that the appellant had suffered a “relapse of his symptoms
of bipolar affective disorder as a result of [his pre-trial] unmedicated state.” Because of his
untreated medical state, Dr. Justice opined that the appellant was not able to appreciate the
charges against him and that “his capacity to disclose to his attorneys, testify in his defense
and testify relevantly” were severely limited; that the appellant was most likely unable to
effectively communicate with defense counsel; and that there was high degree of uncertainty
regarding the appellant's competency to stand trial.
In contrast, Dr. Adamski, who evaluated the appellant for two and one-half
hours on October 31, 1999, approximately twenty-three days after the appellant had resumed
his medications, testified that the appellant was competent at trial and had simply chosen not
to communicate with his counsel. Although he had reviewed the appellant's prior medical
records and the documents amassed during the appellant's lengthy stay at Sharpe Hospital,
Dr. Adamski further testified that he could “find no records indicating that this individual is,
or has ever been, psychiatrically dysfunctional.”
At the conclusion on the hearing on January 7, 2000, the circuit court found
that the appellant was competent to stand trial, and the circuit court sentenced the appellant
to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On August 7, 2001, the circuit court denied
all of the appellant's outstanding post-trial motions and confirmed the appellant's sentence
to life in the penitentiary without the possibility of parole.
The appellant appeals his conviction and subsequent sentencing.
The United States Supreme Court has further recognized that “[c]ompetence
to stand trial is rudimentary, for upon it depends the main part of those rights deemed
essential to a fair trial, including the right to effective assistance of counsel, the right to
summon, to confront, and to cross-examine witnesses, and the right to testify on one's behalf
or to remain silent without penalty for doing so.” Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U.S. 348, 354,
116 S.Ct. 1373, 1376, 134 L.Ed.2d 498, 506 (1996). In Cooper, the United States Supreme
Court held that an Oklahoma law presuming that a criminal defendant is competent to stand
trial unless the defendant can prove his lack of competence by clear and convincing evidence
violated the defendant's due process rights.
This Court has recognized the use of a two-pronged standard to determine
whether an individual is competent to stand trial. “To be competent to stand trial, a
defendant must exhibit a sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a
reasonable degree of rational understanding and a rational, as well as factual, understanding
of the proceedings against him.” Syllabus Point 2, State v. Arnold, 159 W.Va. 158, 219
S.E.2d 922 (1975) overruled on other grounds by State v. Demastus, 165 W.Va. 572, 270
S.E.2d 649 (1980).
At issue is whether the circuit court erred in failing to grant the appellant a new
trial because the appellant lacked competence to participate in his own defense.
After being arrested for murder in the instant case, the circuit court initially
found the appellant incompetent to stand trial and ordered the appellant receive treatment at
Sharpe Hospital. The appellant remained at Sharpe Hospital for almost nine months where
he was diagnosed, treated, and apparently restored to competency. (See footnote 5)
Based on Dr. Justice's conclusions, the appellant, in his untreated medical
condition, had difficulty blocking out sounds, had racing thoughts, and had difficulty
focusing. The appellant's perception of events was skewed by his paranoid, persecutory
thinking. During trial, the appellant was afraid of his attorneys and believed that people in
the courtroom could read his mind, and that he, in turn, could read the minds of others. In
his untreated medical state, the appellant was not able to appreciate the charges against him
and his ability to meaningfully participate in the trial process and communicate with his
counsel were severely limited.
Without his medications and counseling, the appellant regressed and relapsed
into the state in which the circuit court had initially found him incompetent to stand trial.
(See footnote 6)
Having reviewed the record, we find that the appellant did not “exhibit a sufficient present
ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.” We
further find that the appellant lacked the “rational, as well as factual, understanding of the
proceedings against him.” Accordingly, we find that the appellant lacked the mental capacity
to meaningfully participate in his defense.
Reversed and Remanded.