The man accused of fatally stabbing a Ukrainian immigrant last year on a commuter train in Charlotte, N.C., has been found incapable of proceeding to trial on the state murder charge, according to court filings.
But the finding by medical professionals who evaluated the suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., does not signal an end to the state’s case against him.
Typically, the next step would be for county prosecutors to call for a hearing focused on Mr. Brown’s capacity to stand trial in the future. A judge would most likely then call for “restoration,” which would involve treating Mr. Brown with medication, counseling or whatever care doctors deem necessary for him to become capable of proceeding in court.
But Mr. Brown, 35, is also facing a federal charge, and he is in federal custody. That means all state court proceedings are essentially on pause while the federal case plays out. The findings from the evaluation were contained in a motion that Mr. Brown’s state public defender filed on Tuesday.
Mr. Brown was charged in September with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system, according to the Justice Department. If convicted in the death of Iryna Zarutska, who was 23, he could face the federal death penalty.
When a suspect has been charged with murder by state or local officials, it is rare for federal officials to file their own charges in a seemingly random act of street violence. But the killing of Ms. Zarutska on the night of Aug. 22 drew widespread national attention after grisly video of the attack was released by the Charlotte Area Transit System.
The footage ignited a firestorm on the right as conservatives used the case to fuel arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets. Ms. Zarutska’s mother, Anna, attended President Trump’s State of the Union address this year, openly sobbing as Mr. Trump called Mr. Brown a “deranged monster” and falsely claimed that he “came in through open borders.” Mr. Brown was born in Charlotte.
Several years before his arrest, Mr. Brown had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness, schizophrenia, that police departments, jails and even mental health systems across the country are ill-equipped to treat. In recent years, his family said they believed he was too dangerous to live with them and he became homeless. Yet under state law, he was not considered dangerous enough to be treated against his will.
The federal prison system is expected to release a separate psychological evaluation of Mr. Brown this month.
If he is deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial, a federal judge will most likely hold a competency hearing, and Mr. Brown will receive treatment as part of a restoration process. (Judges can reject the findings of psychological evaluations and skip restoration, but legal experts say they do so only rarely.) Doctors would then determine whether Mr. Brown’s mental competency was restored.
No matter their findings, it will ultimately be up to the judge to make a final determination.
For years Mr. Brown had been telling hospitals, the police and even, he claimed, the F.B.I., that his body had been contaminated by a “man-made material,” enabling the government to control him.
To his family, he complained that health care workers had told him it was a matter for the police, while the police had told him it was a medical issue. Often, these encounters ended with Mr. Brown in jail.
For his gravest offense, an armed robbery, he was sent to prison for six years — the maximum sentence. Most of the other charges against Mr. Brown over time were dismissed. But none would not have resulted in much, if any, jail time, even if they had been prosecuted to the fullest extent.
Republicans have sought to make the stabbing case a flashpoint in the high-stakes Senate race between former Gov. Roy Cooper, a moderate Democrat, and Michael Whatley, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Mr. Whatley has tried to blame Mr. Cooper for the stabbing, claiming that a settlement his administration had reached to reduce crowding in state prisons during the pandemic resulted in an early release for Mr. Brown.
But Mr. Brown was released before Mr. Cooper agreed to the settlement — and after serving the mandatory minimum sentence.
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C.
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