FORT SMITH -- A federal judge has ordered that a 75-year-old Kentucky man be released from custody because he was mentally incompetent to stand trial on the firearms charge brought against him more than three years ago.
U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III signed the dismissal and release order Friday for James Curtis, who was indicted in April 2012 on a charge of possession of a firearm after having been committed to a mental institution.
A footnote in his order stated that on his return to Fort Smith from the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C., he would be released without condition to his daughter Regina Adderholt, who plans to pick him up today.
The order stated that Curtis was mentally incompetent to stand trial on the charge. He was forcibly medicated to restore him to competence, but on appeal, Holmes declined to order his forcible medication.
The U.S. attorney's office filed the motion to dismiss the indictment and release Curtis on Friday, noting that a psychiatric evaluation of Curtis last month concluded Curtis was incompetent and unrestorable but would not pose a danger to himself or others if released.
Curtis first was arrested Jan. 29, 2012, when a Fort Smith police officer found him sleeping in his Jeep Cherokee parked outside the U.S. attorney's office in downtown Fort Smith.
The police report stated that Curtis told the officer he was waiting for the office to open so he could talk to one of the attorneys. He said he didn't want to talk to attorneys in Kentucky and that deputies in Kentucky were out to get him, wanted to kill him and his wife, and had planted a tracking device in his vehicle.
Curtis had three .45-caliber handguns, a rifle, a large fixed-blade knife and more than 100 rounds of ammunition with him, the report stated.
Court records showed that Curtis was committed to Western State Hospital in Kentucky for nine days in April 2010 after he threatened police with a gun during a domestic dispute.
A mental evaluation in Butner after his indictment concluded he suffered from delusional disorder, persecutory type, but that receiving anti-psychotic medication would restore him to competence so he could stand trial.
He was treated with risperidone, which government doctors said restored him to reality, but Curtis objected to the involuntary treatment.
Holmes initially upheld his involuntary treatment, but Curtis appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordered further consideration by Holmes. In December, Holmes ruled that the government failed to demonstrate that involuntarily medicating Curtis to restore his competence was warranted.
Holmes made the ruling after a report and recommendation in November by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Marschewski, who wrote there was evidence that Curtis' mental problems were caused by a brain injury from a fall from a ladder in 2009 and not from a mental disease or defect.
Metro on 05/19/2015