Is he competent? Judge says ’yes’ for man charged in killings

WEST PALM BEACH — Is Marlin Larice Joseph competent to stand trial?

Does he understand that he’s accused of killing his mother’s girlfriend and her 11-year-old daughter?

Can he comprehend that he could be put to death?

On Friday, after more than a year of doctors, judges and attorneys toying with those questions, Circuit Judge Laura Johnson said “yes,” he is competent, meaning he can help in his defense and understands the proceedings. His case once again has been transferred out of Palm Beach County’s mental health court to the criminal court.

That decision comes about a month after Joseph broke his attorney’s nose in what the attorney described as an “unprovoked” attack at the county jail, one that same attorney argues is further evidence that he does not understand the case against him.

Joseph, 28, is charged in the Dec. 28, 2017, killings of his mother’s girlfriend 36-year-old Kaladaa Crowell and her 11-year-old daughter, Kyra Inglett, outside their West Palm Beach home on the 800 block of Third Street.

Both the state and his defense team agree that Joseph suffers from mental illness. They differ, however, in opinions on whether that hinders his ability to understand legal proceedings.

“We are preparing his defense vigorously,” Joseph’s attorney, Fredrick Susaneck, said by telephone Monday. He declined to comment further about the case, though court documents indicate he does not believe his client is competent.

The back-and-forth

Joseph’s first competency hearing came in late August 2018 when a judge ordered that a doctor evaluate him.

During a status check the next month, after refusing to meet with a doctor, Joseph told Circuit Judge Dina Keever-Agrama he wouldn’t meet with the doctor because, “I ain’t no mentally ill person.”

His defense team and the state thought otherwise, as did a doctor whom Joseph eventually allowed to evaluate him.

Records indicate he spoke of having delusional thoughts and repeatedly was sent to the jail’s mental health unit.

Joseph was ordered to go to a facility for “treatment to return him to competency,” according to court filings.

After a week at the Treasure Coast Forensic Treatment Center in Indiantown, another doctor determined Joseph was competent, though he spent another six months there.

According to Susaneck, the staff “trained” Joseph on how to behave in court, as opposed to helping him understand the court process further.

Additionally, Susaneck said that during the mock trial situations in which Joseph was placed, the staff discussed the case with Joseph without an attorney present, unbeknownst to his defense team.

“It will be impossible to ever determine if the defendant is competent to stand trial and assist his attorney in court or if he is just acting the way he was taught,” Susaneck wrote in a motion asking a judge to throw out any reports, diagnoses and evaluations from the center “for obvious reasons.”

Joseph refused to meet with another doctor to determine competency and eventually was moved back to the county jail ahead of the August hearing.

Competency

As Susaneck and his co-counsel, Catherine Mazzullo, prepared at the county jail with Joseph for that hearing, they explained the court proceedings, asked whether he understood the charges and tried to verify whether he grasped their consequences, Susaneck said in a filing last month.

Then Joseph unexpectedly socked Susaneck across the face and scratched Mazzullo. Susaneck went to the emergency room for six stitches to his lip, a CAT scan and treatment for a broken nose.

Both he and Mazzullo were given tetanus shots, according to court records.

In an emergency motion to have the competency hearing rescheduled, Susaneck said the attack came “without warning and clearly in spite of the alleged finding of competency in this case.” He argued that Joseph’s “incapacity to understand the court process and the charges against him” prompted the violence.

Nevertheless, Johnson ruled that the case will proceed to the county’s criminal court.

Randy Otto, an associate law professor at the University of South Florida, said it’s common for defendants, after being deemed incompetent, later to be found competent. In fact, he said, it’s the goal.

Mock trial situations at treatment facilities are used to help defendants make the most of their time there, he said.

“Why not educate them on the legal process?” he asked. “Why not give them some experience or exposure to mock legal proceedings?”

The case

The killings Joseph’s accused of were done in a “cold, calculated and premeditated manner,” Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis wrote when explaining why the office was seeking the death penalty.

According to West Palm Beach police records, Joseph had been arguing with Crowell on Dec. 28, 2017, about her daughter, Kyra, seemingly not getting along with other children in the home. He said the fifth-grade Northboro Elementary School student “had a bad attitude.”

That evening he shot Crowell, then gunned down her daughter, witnesses said, before he fled. He spent the next four days on the lam, apparently staying with a cousin in Lake Worth.

Authorities found the cousins after Javarie Williams used Joseph’s credit card at a Lantana gas station. Williams spent 30 days in jail for lying to law enforcement about where Joseph was.

Joseph has been in custody since his arrest in early January 2018.

On Friday morning, he stood quietly as Johnson set his next court appearance for Oct. 18, a status check.

The silence was a stark contrast to the agitated man who yelled at a judge last year insisting he wasn’t mentally ill and pleading to be taken to trial.

And now, he will.

ohitchcock@pbpost.com

@ohitchcock