State v. O'Neill
| Decision Date | 26 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | A19-0803 |
| Citation | 945 N.W.2d 71 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Jude Thomas Mary O'NEILL, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Court of Appeals |
Keith Ellison, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Jonathan P. Schmidt, Assistant County Attorney, Rebecca Barberio (certified student attorney), Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)
Travis M. Keil, Eden Prairie, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Cochran, Presiding Judge; Segal, Chief Judge; Ross, Judge.
The state charged Jude O'Neill with fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle, and the district court conducted a contested competency hearing. Three mental-health experts agreed that O'Neill suffers from a cognitive impairment but disagreed as to its effect on his competency. The district court relied on the court-appointed evaluator's reports and testimony, found O'Neill competent to stand trial, and found him guilty after a bench trial. O'Neill challenges the competency finding on appeal, arguing that the district court erred by choosing one expert's opinion over the two other experts’ opinions. Because the standard of review directs us to afford deference to the district court's factually supported findings, and because the district court made its competency determination while acting within its discretion, we affirm.
The state charged Jude O'Neill with one felony count of fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle for an incident in February 2018. The district court ordered a psychological evaluation under Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 20.01 to determine O'Neill's competency to stand trial. Clinical forensic psychologist Dr. Jill Rogstad concluded that O'Neill was competent. O'Neill requested and received a contested hearing under Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 20.01, subdivision 5(a)(1), during which the district court received previously created psychological reports about O'Neill and heard expert testimony, which we now summarize.
Clinical neuropsychologist Dr. Ronald Federici evaluated O'Neill in September 2009 when O'Neill was 12 years old. At that time, Dr. Federici concluded that O'Neill exhibited global developmental delays because of an alcohol- or drug-related birth-defect syndrome; cognitive impairment affecting his speech, comprehension, and expressive skills; a learning disability; and attention and concentration deficits. Six years later, after the state charged O'Neill with a motor-vehicle theft in 2015 unrelated to this appeal, Dr. Federici wrote to the district court opining that O'Neill's impairment impacted his "thinking, reasoning, attention, organization[, and] thought[-]process patterns." The doctor believed that O'Neill did "not understand any aspect of the court proceedings even though he may ‘present’ that he is competent or understands" and that he should be civilly committed.
Dr. Jill Rogstad also evaluated O'Neill and reported her opinion in connection with the 2015 motor-vehicle theft. She opined that O'Neill could correctly identify various court-related roles and that he also generally understood legal concepts and court processes. She believed that O'Neill could evaluate legal options reasonably. Dr. Rogstad concluded that O'Neill was competent to stand trial in that case because O'Neill showed that he could meaningfully confer with defense counsel, understood his attorney's advocacy role, and showed his willingness to help prepare his defense.
Doctors Federici and Rogstad evaluated O'Neill again in 2016. Dr. Federici noted consistent developmental delays and doubted that O'Neill could think or reason at a high level. He opined that O'Neill was therefore " ‘not competent’ per the neuropsychological standards as opposed to the legal-court standards." By contrast, Dr. Rogstad again believed that O'Neill was competent, observing that he factually and rationally understood courtroom principles, criminal proceedings, witness roles, privileged communications, and the allegations against him.
In July 2017, forensic psychologist Dr. Paul Reitman evaluated O'Neill in proceedings otherwise unrelated to this appeal. He believed that O'Neill could understand core legal concepts but was unable to engage in higher-level reasoning or grasp more complex legal concepts. Dr. Reitman opined that O'Neill was not competent to participate in his own defense. Dr. Reitman reiterated that opinion in October 2017, but he did recognize the possibility that O'Neill might regain competency. He noted that O'Neill expressed to his therapist that he worried "that if he is found competent to stand trial that he is going to go to prison." In a March 2018 report, Dr. Reitman observed that O'Neill had "emerging concrete understanding of the legal concepts" but still could not understand court proceedings.
In the proceedings underlying this appeal, Dr. Rogstad evaluated O'Neill again and reported her findings in April 2018. She found that O'Neill was presenting himself in a "markedly discrepant" fashion from her previous encounters with him. This time, O'Neill claimed to be unable to recall details of his offense and said he had probably injured his head since Dr. Rogstad last examined him. And he could no longer define the role of the jury. She found that O'Neill was not fully cooperating, observing that he frequently claimed either that he did not know or could not remember information. But Dr. Rogstad found that he asked "relevant and thoughtful questions that conveyed his retention, application, and use of the material in question," demonstrating that he could learn.
Suspicious about O'Neill's inconsistent presentation from her previous encounters with him, Dr. Rogstad administered three tests to gauge O'Neill's testing "response style." O'Neill's performance on the first test raised Dr. Rogstad's "concerns about a feigned ... or irrelevant ... response style." O'Neill tested below benchmarks on two of three trials in the second test, leading Dr. Rogstad to believe that O'Neill was feigning incompetence because "even persons with genuine brain injuries and other neuropsychological deficits can perform adequately." O'Neill's responses on the third test led Dr. Rogstad to believe that he was deliberately suppressing correct answers or picking answers randomly. She found that the tests showed inconsistent effort and a deliberate attempt to fake an impairment. Dr. Rogstad did not believe that any intervening event caused the change in O'Neill's presentation, finding that his behavior was "more consistent with a willful lack of cooperation and feigned deficiencies." She reasoned that O'Neill's refusal to answer direct questions despite his ability to convey the same information later also showed his malingering.
Dr. Rogstad concluded that O'Neill could communicate and express his ideas clearly; could understand, appreciate, apply, and use legal concepts in a rational, self-serving manner; could understand his charges, consequences of legal alternatives, and adjudicative process; and "could engage in a logical decision-making process when discussing his specific legal situations and hypothetical scenarios." Dr. Rogstad opined that O'Neill was competent for trial.
Dr. Federici disagreed. He believed O'Neill could not exercise common sense, rational judgment, or problem solving. Comparing his 2009 and 2016 evaluations, Dr. Federici opined that O'Neill's condition was deteriorating and would continue to deteriorate. He believed that O'Neill could answer questions but lacked real understanding. O'Neill's memory-test results were so low that Dr. Federici believed that O'Neill's ability to learn new material "just doesn't exist for him." Dr. Federici clarified that his incompetency opinion was based on "a neuropsychological and a medical perspective [of] competency of brain damage," and he acknowledged that he was not familiar with the legal meaning of competency.
Dr. Reitman also believed that O'Neill was incompetent. He testified that O'Neill's significant neuropsychological conditions produced "profound impairments in the higher executive cognitive functions." He surmised that O'Neill could learn only through repetition and could not solve new problems. Dr. Reitman believed that O'Neill understood general court roles but "lack[ed] the ability to engage in comprehension of higher level cognitive functioning" and "the ability to engage in more than one step [of] inductive [or] deductive reasoning." Dr. Reitman disagreed with Dr. Rogstad's opinion that O'Neill was malingering and advocated for sending O'Neill to a program to determine whether he could be restored to competency.
The district court found that O'Neill is cognitively impaired by fetal exposure to drugs or alcohol. It declined to rely on Dr. Federici's incompetency determination because Dr. Federici was not a forensic psychologist and his evaluation and conclusion did not focus on legal competency. It also rejected Dr. Reitman's opinion, reasoning that Dr. Reitman relied heavily on collateral sources and failed to adequately demonstrate how specific data points factored into his opinion. The district court also observed that Dr. Reitman was inconsistent in his evaluations, once concluding that O'Neill could not be restored to competency and three months later concluding that his competency could be restored.
The district court was most convinced by Dr. Rogstad's opinion because she had performed three forensic evaluations, thoroughly explained her reasoning, and focused her evaluations on O'Neill's ability to rationally consult with his attorney, comprehend court proceedings, and participate in his defense. It was particularly persuaded by the test results indicating that O'Neill was feigning incompetency by suppressing correct answers. It found the circumstances of Dr. Rogstad's 2015 and 2016 evaluations particularly...
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