Mental illness delays Charlotte light rail stabbing charges in federal court
A federal judge has found that DeCarlos Brown Jr.’s mental illness makes him unable to stand trial on his federal charges in the Charlotte light rail stabbing and killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska.
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He will spend up to the next four months in a prison medical facility, where doctors will try to get him to be able to understand the charges he faces and how the legal system works.
Brown spoke to Judge Kenneth Bell in court on Tuesday and addressed his own mental health: “The FBI refused to investigate, and I want to press charges. And I want the media to know that.”
Brown’s mother also attended the hearing.
The Tuesday morning ruling was not surprising.
A federal psychiatric report in April found Brown “too mentally ill and impaired to understand the nature and consequences of the criminal case against him,” his federal defense attorneys wrote in a motion ahead of the competency hearing.
“Our Constitution requires that … [Brown] cannot be tried or sentenced to death” while suffering from a mental illness that stunts his ability to understand what is happening, First Assistant Federal Public Defender Megan Hoffman and death penalty lawyer Joshua Kendrick wrote.
President Donald Trump last year called for Brown to face the death penalty, but a de-facto moratorium has blocked executions in North Carolina for the last 20 years. The federal charge Brown faces for killing Zarutska aboard mass transit, upon conviction, would carry the potential of a death penalty.
Brown also faces a state murder case, which was paused after an N.C. judge in April found Brown incapable to proceed. State prosecutors have said they will wait for the federal case to conclude before resuming their prosecution in Mecklenburg County.
Brown has a documented history of mental illness, his family said and body-camera footage showed.
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Eight months before the Aug. 22 stabbing, Brown told Charlotte police officers he tried and failed to get help for the “man-made material” he said was controlling him. He begged two Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers to investigate it, The Charlotte Observer reported after petitioning a judge to order body camera footage of that night be released.
Brown also told those officers he suffered from schizophrenia and did not take medicine for it.
“For years, Mr. Brown has suffered from debilitating mental illness and impairment,” federal public defenders wrote in a May motion asking for Tuesday’s competency hearing. “He experiences delusions that center around his belief that he was exposed to a Material and it ‘control[s] his every movement.’ He refers to it as his Body Emergency.”
“The delusions are constant and persistent,” they wrote.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Edward Ryan and Daniel Cervantes wrote in a motion that the psychiatric evaluation said Brown’s “prognosis to become competent to proceed is good.”
If, after four months in a prison medical facility, Brown is still not competent, he can be held longer until he is restored. He cannot be held indefinitely, but lawyers can make incremental motions to keep him in the facility until he is restored.
If Brown never becomes sound enough to be prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, he will likely be civilly committed to a facility because “his release would create a substantial risk of bodily injury to another person or serious damage to property of another,” assistant U.S. attorneys wrote.
If Brown is one day able to stand trial but pleads insanity, the U.S. government will seek to have him civilly committed, Ferguson’s office promised.
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This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
