Opinion ID: 2670154
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Curtis’s Indictment

Text: On January 29, 2012, Curtis was arrested when police officers found him parked in front of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas with firearms and ammunition inside his vehicle. The magistrate judge thereafter ordered a mental evaluation of Curtis. On April 9, 2012, a jury indicted Curtis on one count of possession of a firearm after having been committed to a mental institution. Randall Rattan, Ph.D., the primary evaluating psychologist at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Worth, Texas, evaluated Curtis to determine whether he was competent to stand trial. Dr. Rattan diagnosed Curtis with delusional disorder, persecutory type, and concluded that Curtis was incompetent to proceed to trial. Based on Dr. Rattan’s report and Curtis’s testimony at the competency hearing, the magistrate judge concluded that Curtis was incompetent to stand trial. The magistrate judge recommended that Curtis be committed to the custody of the attorney general to be hospitalized for treatment and for evaluation to determine if he could attain the capacity to move forward in the criminal proceedings. The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation. Curtis was then committed to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina. Angela Weaver, Ph.D., a forensic psychologist, evaluated Curtis, with -3- psychiatric consultation by Robert Lucking, M.D., a staff psychiatrist. Drs. Weaver and Lucking confirmed the diagnosis of delusional disorder, persecutory type. Their report concluded that Curtis remained incompetent to stand trial but opined that there was a substantial probability that Curtis’s competency could be restored through the administration of antipsychotic medication. Because Curtis refused treatment, the report recommended that he be involuntarily medicated. Based on the report, the magistrate judge recommended that Curtis be involuntarily medicated to restore him to competency. Curtis objected and requested a hearing pursuant to Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003). At the hearing, Drs. Weaver and Lucking’s report was admitted into evidence, and Dr. Lucking testified via telephone. The magistrate judge issued an amended report and recommendation, in which he found that the government had met its burden of proving each of the Sell factors by clear and convincing evidence. Accordingly, the magistrate judge recommended that the district court grant the government’s request to involuntarily medicate Curtis with an injection of twenty-five milligrams of risperidone every two weeks for a period of up to four months. Curtis filed objections to the report and recommendation. The district court denied Curtis’s objections and adopted the magistrate judge’s amended report and recommendation in its entirety. The district court stayed the imposition of its order pending this interlocutory appeal.