Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Competency Hearings and Conflicting Medical Opinions

Competency Hearings and Conflicting Medical Opinions

The issues surrounding Brian David Mitchell's competence to stand trial revolved around his revelations and whether in following them made him incompetent and/or insane. In the federal trial his insanity defense was based on his propensity to receive revelations from God, as he claims, and then to act out according to what he is told by those revelations, something which met the standard for an insanity defense according to his lawyers. However other people, especially Elizabeth Smart and Wanda Barzee as well as other lay witnesses, testified that Mitchell used these so-called revelations only to manipulate others and for self-gratification.

Utah State Competency Hearing

Mitchell was declared incompetent to stand trial by Salt Lake City District Judge Judy Atherton on July 26, 2005, who ordered he be retained until he becomes competent to stand trial. The ruling was based on expert psychological reports, mainly from Dr. Jennifer Skeem, who found Mitchell to be a paranoid schizophrenic with little grasp of reality who could not rationally assist counsel in preparing a defense nor did he understand the legal proceedings against him. The same Judge rejected forcibly medicating Mitchell due to the reported low probability of a positive outcome. Mitchell was committed to a psychiatric prison hospital in Salt Lake City. He was again found "incompetent to stand trial" on December 18, 2006.

Federal District Court Competency Hearing

In 2008 US Attorney Brett Tolman commenced federal proceedings to prove Mitchell's competency to stand trial before the statutes of limitations expired for a federal kidnapping case. His strategy was based on both expert witness testimony, mainly from New York forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, an associate professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine and chairman of The Forensic Panel, plus many lay witnesses including Elizabeth Smart and staffers who attended to Michell in the State Hospital. The use of lay witnesses testifying as to his competence was a new legal strategy utilized in hearings to determine competence and has established a precedent. Several defense motions to stop lay witnesses testifying and to move the trial outside of Utah were rejected. The hearing commenced in October 2009, with Smart giving early testimony, and continued throughout November and December 2009.

The mental health professionals who found Mitchell incompetent (over time) include: Richart DeMier, a court appointed forensic psychologist from the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, who said Mitchell was not making rational decisions about his criminal defense and specifically stated, "If he believes he's going to be miraculously delivered from prison by God in two years time, that's not a rational thought process." He concluded that Mitchell is a paranoid schizophrenic who is incompetent partly due to Mitchell's belief "that he is divinely ordained to fulfill a special role at the end of the world, putting himself on par with Jesus or God"; Dr. Paul Whitehead, a Utah State Hospital psychologist, who found him incompetent in 2005 diagnosing him with a delusional disorder; forensic psychologist Stephen Golding, who concluded Mitchell to have a delusional disorder with deviant sexual behavior and paranoia; and Dr. Jennifer Skeem, a psychology professor from the University of California-Irvine who found Mitchell incompetent to stand trial for the Utah state process in 2004, finding that he has a rare delusional disorder. She wrote in her 2004 report for Judge Atherton that Mitchell believes that "he would be held in jail for seven years until a day of judgment when he would be rescued by God and reunited with Smart and his now-estranged wife, Wanda Barzee" which would be during 2010, counting from the time of Mitchell's arrest.

Michael Welner, a psychiatrist from New York City, found Mitchell competent to stand trial, finding that he suffers from a range of disorders, including pedophilia, anti-social and narcissistic personality disorders, but that he was neither psychotic nor delusional. Dr. Welner was critical of other mental health professionals who did not research the level of acceptance and the roles played by revelations, prophets and prophesies in religions of the Latter Day Saints movements or Mormonism which Mitchell was a part of. His conclusions included the fact that Mitchell can control situations and that "Lust trumped religion" for Mitchell. He also noted that Mitchell is used to operating in a parallel world of concealment and obfuscation just as most polygamist breakaway groups from the modern LDS church do. In his conclusions, he also compared Mitchell's behavior to that of pedophile Catholic priests who "routinely and dramatically distort their relationship with God" to justify their sexual acts.

In this third competency hearing, this time before Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. Federal Court for the District of Utah, Mitchell was found competent to stand trial on March 1, 2010, with Kimball's describing Mitchell as an "effectively misleading psychopath" who has manipulated people into thinking him incompetent.