Court Opinion

ID: 9468485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:16:08.953433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:53.387439
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES,
Circuit Judge, concurring.
I agree with the conclusion of the majority that the trial court’s failure to conduct a competency hearing sua sponte did not deprive Owens of his federal constitutional right to due process of law. Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402, 80 S.Ct. 788, 4 L.Ed.2d 824 (1960); Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162, 95 S.Ct. 896, 43 L.Ed.2d 103 (1975).
I write separately only to emphasize my view that the better practice under the circumstances of the present case would have been for the trial court to conduct a competency hearing. When a defendant’s counsel harbors doubts about his client’s competency to stand trial and when the circumstances suggest an inexplicable and irrational pattern of criminality coupled with suicidal manifestations, I believe that a competency hearing becomes appropriate. The majority observed, and the point merits repetition, that the signs of incompetency are not “fixed or immutable . . . [rather] the question is often a difficult one in which a wide range of manifestations and subtle nuances are implicated.” Drope v. Missouri, supra, at 180, 95 S.Ct. at 908. Moreover, the trial court must be ever alert for indications of a change in the defendant’s competency to stand trial. Id. at 181, 95 S.Ct. at 908; Pate v. Smith, 637 F.2d 1068, 1071 (6th Cir. 1981). Here, once Owens’s counsel received the psychiatrist’s report he did not press the competency issue. Furthermore, though the trial court was not privy to the competency report, the court had the opportunity to observe Owens’s actions and demeanor and to hear Owens’s testimony at trial. Under the circumstances of this case, therefore, the failure to conduct a competency hearing sua sponte does not rise to constitutional dimension.