A mentally ill State Hospital patient charged with rape was deemed unfit for trial Thursday because of brain damage.
Based on findings by state doctors, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims ruled 56-year-old Willard Richard Hood of Batesville innocent by reason of mental defect.
But the judge also found that Hood remains a potential danger to other people. That decision requires Hood to undergo another examination by state doctors, who will develop a treatment plan. Hood can be kept in custody indefinitely and will be monitored by another judge.
The six months of court proceedings was mostly consumed by the time that doctors needed to conduct two mental evaluations four months apart, both concluding that Hood was unable to participate in his defense and could not be restored to sanity to meet speedy trial deadlines.
The most recent evaluation report, filed in November, recommends that Hood "represents a high risk of future violence," but the danger could be reduced by placing him in a "secure nursing facility with constant supervision."
The diagnosis by the evaluator, psychiatrist Jason Beaman at the State Hospital, was major neurocognitive disorder due to traumatic brain injury. The first evaluator to examine Hood, psychologist Michael Wood, made that same diagnosis in the man's first mental examination for the case in July.
The injury was caused by a lack of oxygen from a drug overdose in 2009 that put him in a coma for a week, according to the reports.
Court records show Hood was arrested in June, two months after prosecutors filed a rape charge against him. He was accused of raping a female patient at the State Hospital on April 30, 2012. The report said she was asleep when Hood attacked her in her bedroom.
He was in the State Hospital at the time for an examination in connection to a criminal mischief charge in Independence County. The report states he had also been found incompetent to stand trial in that case before the rape charge was filed.
Metro on 12/12/2014