AUGUSTA, Maine — A Gardiner man is competent to stand trial for murder for the alleged slaying and dismemberment of his father, a Superior Court judge ruled Monday.
A trial date has not been set.
Leroy Smith III, 27, was arrested on May 6, 2014, and charged with intentional or knowing murder or depraved indifference murder after police said he killed and dismembered his father, 56-year-old Leroy Smith II, and then placed the remains in a wooded area along a dirt road in Richmond. He has been in state custody since that day and at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital in Augusta since June 2014, according to court documents.
On Monday, Justice Michaela Murphy found that due to recent treatment that includes taking an antipsychotic medication, the defendant is competent to stand trial and assist his attorneys. The judge issued her order after holding a competency hearing over two days earlier this year.
The judge previously assigned to the case ordered more than a year ago that Smith be forced to take the medication to see if that would restore him to competency after he refused to take the medication prescribed. Superior Court Justice Donald Marden found Smith not competent to stand trial in January 2015.
Smith began cooperating with his attorneys earlier this year, Murphy wrote. The judge expressed concern that Smith would voluntarily continue to take the medications now that she has issued her ruling.
“With respect to the order which now permits involuntary medication of Mr. Smith, there is an unresolved issue in Maine law as to whether the court has the authority to maintain such an order once competence has been restored,” Murphy wrote. “As the parties know, however, competence can come and go for a person, like Mr. Smith, who the parties agree suffers from a serious mental illness.”
Murphy ordered Riverview and the State Forensic Service to continue to provide reports to her about whether there is a change in Smith’s competence and whether or not he takes his medication voluntarily.
Shortly after his arrest, Smith allegedly told police that he killed and “filleted” his father because the older man had sexually abused him throughout his life, according to court documents. He has since said his father was poisoning him with rat poison.
In January 2015, a state forensic expert testified that Smith likely suffers from schizophrenia, paranoid schizophrenia or delusional disorder and believes he is “the god of the kingdom of Heaven,” and that the primary role of his attorneys is to put him in touch with heavy metal rock bands so he could tell them he is God.
BDN writer Beth Brogan contributed to this report.