Opinion ID: 4524141
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Brandon Byrd

Text: Brandon Byrd was charged in August 2016 with the first-degree murder of his father. The Superior Court found him incompetent to stand trial and committed him to Saint Elizabeths Hospital for competency restoration treatment. While he was there, the United States moved the Superior Court to order his involuntary medication for the purpose of rendering him competent. In March 2018, the Superior Court granted the motion, but the medication order was stayed pending appeal and thereafter, at the behest of the United States, this court vacated the order and remanded the matter for further factual development of the record. In the meantime, efforts were under way at Saint Elizabeths to provide for Mr. Byrd’s medication for safety reasons. Mr. Byrd was diagnosed with paranoid 19 schizophrenia. Over time, his agitation, auditory hallucinations, and other psychiatric symptoms worsened, and he became seriously aggressive and threatening to others at the Hospital. He was medicated on an emergency basis after he threatened to jump into the nursing station and assault the staff. By February 2018, Mr. Byrd’s severe aggressive outbursts and angry, psychotic behavior led his treating psychiatrist to propose his involuntary medication for the purposes of reducing the danger he posed to himself and others. A Medication Review Officer approved the request, as did a unanimous Medication Review Panel, which found Mr. Byrd to be “gravely disabled” and, without medications, “a safety risk to self [and] others especially given his ongoing psychosis and recent escalation of his agitation [and] aggressive behaviors.” Mr. Byrd moved in his Superior Court criminal case for reversal of the Panel’s decision. He argued that the Hospital’s administrative determination violated his due process rights because it did not satisfy the heightened procedural and substantive requirements that Sell held applicable when involuntary medication is for the purpose of rendering a pretrial detainee competent to stand trial. Those requirements, Mr. Byrd contended, governed any non-emergency involuntary medication of pretrial criminal defendants held for competency restoration at Saint Elizabeths, regardless of the purpose. Mr. Byrd also argued that the involuntary 20 medication procedures of D.C. Code § 7-1231.08 could not be used in his case because he had not been committed to Saint Elizabeths under the District of Columbia Hospitalization of the Mentally Ill Act. 36 The Superior Court denied Mr. Byrd’s motion but temporarily stayed his involuntary medication to allow him to seek a stay in this court pending his appeal. This court granted that stay. Our stay order instructed Mr. Byrd to update this court regarding the stillpending proceedings on remand over his involuntary medication for the purpose of rendering him competent to stand trial. On November 15, 2019, the Superior Court ruled that the government had met its burden under Sell and could medicate Mr. Byrd without his consent to restore him to competence. Mr. Byrd’s counsel promptly informed us of this ruling and of Mr. Byrd’s decision not to take an immediate appeal from it. 37 36 Mr. Byrd presented additional arguments that he has not pursued on appeal. 37 Counsel represented that Mr. Byrd intended to preserve his objections to the Sell ruling for a potential future appeal. 21