A mentally ill man suspected of killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015 because it provided abortion services can be forcefully medicated, a federal appeals court said on Monday.
The opinion by the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a federal judge’s order in 2022 that allowed Robert Dear, 66, to be administered medicine for delusional disorder against his will to render him fit to stand trial.
Dear’s federal public defenders appealed U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn’s involuntary medication order, in part because it permits the use of force to compel Dear to take medication or undergo monitoring for any potential physical health consequences.
Dear’s lawyers have argued that forcing him to be treated for delusional illness could exacerbate existing ailments such as untreated high blood pressure and high cholesterol. However, in their appeal, they stated that Blackburn’s decision to grant prison doctors the authority to compel treatment or monitoring for other conditions is “miles away” from the restricted reasons for forced medicine permitted by the US Supreme Court.
The defense questioned Blackburn’s failure to explain why he dismissed the findings of its experts who testified at a hearing on whether Dear should be forcefully medicated in 2022. However, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit said that Blackburn adequately articulated why he placed more weight on the conclusions of the government’s experts based on their expertise in restoring defendants to competency and their work with Dear.
Dear has already dubbed himself a “warrior for the babies” and boasted about the “success” of his attack on the clinic during one of his outbursts at the start of that hearing.
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Dear’s prosecution was stalled in state court when he was repeatedly determined to be mentally incapable of standing trial, therefore he was prosecuted in federal court in 2019 under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
Two of those killed in the attack were accompanying friends to the clinic: Ke’Arre Stewart, 29, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and was a father of two, and Jennifer Markovsky, 36, a mother of two who grew up on Oahu, Hawaii. Garrett Swasey, a campus police officer at a local college, was the third person slain when he arrived at the clinic after hearing about an active shooter.
Source: coloradosun.com