On the eve of a hearing to determine if accused killer Jessica Smith is able to aid in her own defense, her attorneys acknowledged that an evaluation at the Oregon State Hospital has found Smith competent to stand trial.
In April, a Clatsop County judge ordered the onetime Vancouver resident to spend at least a month at the state hospital for a psychological and psychiatric evaluation to determine if she suffered from a mental illness or was feigning symptoms.
A June 10 report from the hospital determined Smith is “presently competent to aid and assist in the defense,” her attorneys Lynne Morgan and William Falls wrote in a court motion filed Monday in Clatsop County Circuit Court.
She was evaluated from May 3 through May 31, when she returned to jail.
Her defense lawyers had argued she was unfit to stand trial after a suicide attempt March 30. They said she had ripped open the veins of one of her wrists that night and needed significant and immediate psychiatric intervention. She was taken by ambulance to the Tillamook Regional Medical Center and, when returned to jail, placed on suicide watch.
Prosecutors countered that Smith, who lived in Vancouver for a short time, may be suffering from severe depression but is aware of the proceedings and may be faking mental illness symptoms to delay a trial.
Smith, 42, is accused of drowning her youngest daughter and trying to kill her oldest daughter at a Cannon Beach hotel in 2014. She has pleaded not guilty to allegations of aggravated murder in the July 31, 2014, drowning of 2-year-old Isabella and attempted aggravated murder in the slashing of 13-year-old Alana in a room at the Surfsand Resort. Alana, whose throat and wrists were cut, is now 14 and living with her father in Washington.
Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis downplayed the suicide attempt. Smith used her fingernails to cut her wrist and her injuries required three stitches but no surgical procedures or blood transfusions, he told the court. Smith left a handwritten message, saying she’d been in custody for 19 months and spent the first year in a more restrictive jail setting.
A forensic psychologist, Brooke Howard, earlier issued an “inconclusive” report on whether Smith can assist in her defense. But Howard, directed by the court to examine Smith, also recommended that “continued observation and examination” of Smith in a hospital could provide more detailed information, the judge noted.
That recommendation, coupled with “defendant’s alleged attempt at self-harm” convinced Clatsop County Judge Cindee Matyas to send her to the state hospital in April, finding there’s “reason to doubt defendant’s fitness to proceed by reason of incapacity.”
Both sides are still expected to appear before the judge Tuesday morning, though a contested aid-and-assist hearing is no longer expected.
A trial date has been delayed until June 12, 2017.
