DeCarlos Brown and competence to stand trial
I see a lot of people on the right are angry at this news about Iryna Zarutska’s accused killer:
A December 29, 2025 report indicated that Brown was “incapable to proceed to trial,” according to the motion filed by one of his attorneys, Daniel Roberts. The next step will be a capacity hearing in Mecklenburg Superior Court at which a judge will determine if Brown should stand trial. Roberts said in the motion that the hearing can’t happen while Brown is in federal custody.
In addition to first-degree murder, Brown also faces a federal charge alleging he committed an act of violence resulting in death on a mass transportation system. State and federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. …
Brown is undergoing a separate psychological evaluation in the federal prison system. A report from that evaluation is expected later this month. If Brown is deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial, a judge will have to hold a capacity hearing in federal court. The state case is also at a standstill while Brown is in federal custody. Brown won’t go to trial in either court until questions surrounding his mental state are resolved.
I’ve read several articles on this, and the reporting is so disjointed and unclear as to be very confusing. It partly has to do with the state versus federal proceedings, and it partly has to do with how far along his incapacity examination has gone, and what will happen if he’s found incapable.
One thing I want to clear up, however, is that this has nothing to do with a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. That has to do with his state of mind at the time of the murder, and the governing federal or state laws on criminal responsibility. What’s going on now with the incapacity evaluations has to do with his present state of mind and whether he is able to understand the charges against him and assist in his own defense. In other words, is he in any kind of touch with reality or is he flagrantly schizophrenic, for example. If the latter, he will be stabilized – most likely with medication, most likely in some sort of secure mental hospital. Then, once he’s stabilized, he will stand trial.
Brown actually does seem to have a bona fide record of schizophrenia, not just a claim as a result of his crime. The issue of capacity or incapacity to stand trial has to do with our justice system’s focus on protecting defendants in the sense of making sure they have an opportunity to receive a proper defense.
I’ll say once again, though, that I find the reporting on this case especially murky.
Miscarriage of justice or straight out aborting it. Brown is obviously screwed in the head and his mother admitted as much, but he is also a malevolent criminal in enough contact with reality to possess mens (as his mother outright said and tried to warn the world of before he murdered someone like she predicted he would), as shown by his boasting about killing Iryna based on her race and trying to get street cred. It shows acknowledgement that what he did was wrong, as does his approach.
Even if he somehow had a severe psychotic episode now rendering him unfit for trial (and given his manipulative pattern of behavior that is quite the question) he should be remanded to custody for the rest of his life and never get out.
He’s been before a judge 14 times previously, and his mental competence was never an issue. Why now?
Arizona did away with M’Naughton rule. Now they have a “guilty but mentally ill” so as long as you are in the throws of mental illness you go to a hospital for the criminally insane. Once “well enough” it’s regular prison.
I’m not buying it. What am I not buying? Well you may ask.
Competence is obviously in the eye of the beholder. If you are sufficiently competent to wander around in public spaces armed to commit mayhem on your fellow travelers, you are bloody well competent enough to be punished or physically limited for your perfidy. Given that the System already deemed him sufficiently competent, either prosecute him as a Bad Actor and execute him or lock him up until either the lobotomy is complete or he dies. Declaring him incompetent and releasing him is not a solution outside what the family / friends of the deceased want to do in response. Cheers –
In 1933, the U.S. was a serious country. On February 15 that year, Giuseppe Zangara (an Italian immigrant) attempted to kill President-elect Franklin Roosevelt in Miami. Instead Zangara’s bullets grievously wounded Chicago’s Mayor Anton Cermak, who was sitting in an open car with FDR, and also hit four bystanders in the crowd.
A short time later, while Cermak was in the hospital, Zangara was convicted on four counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 80 years in prison. (Zangara didn’t contest the charges.)
But then on March 6, Cermak succumbed to his wounds, whereupon Zangara was indicted for first-degree murder. He pleaded guilty and was executed in Florida’s electric chair on March 20, 1933.
34 days between crimes and execution! But that’s when the U.S. was a serious country.
Lesson for the DeCarlos Brown case: Whatever his mental state, he’s unfit to live among us, even in prison. (And as Thomas Sowell would remind us, even if someone is a lifer, as long as he’s alive some demented judge — or governor — might spring him.)
Man, schizophrenia or not, I frankly do not care. He had a knife, it was on camera, there were dozens of witnesses, he kept saying he “got that white girl.” He is the equivalent of a rabid dog and he just needs to be put down. In a just society, they would have given him a trial the next morning, been found guilty by lunch, given an hour to make himself right with got, and then hanged before dinner.
By the way, this is the 1960 case that established the definition of competence to stand trial.
“In a just society, they would have given him a trial the next morning, been found guilty by lunch, given an hour to make himself right with got, and then hanged before dinner.”
Bingo.
Well said on the whole though frankly I think comparing him to a rabid dog is a disservice to the dog. Rabid animals and people are in the throes of a fatal condition and break down and lash out uncontrollably without any real malice or forethought. Brown isn’t like that. He’s obviously mentally ill, but he isn’t that mentally ill. He had enough awareness to conceal a weapon, select and stalk his target, murder her, and then boast about it for street cred using her race as his selling point. Say what you will about rabies, but it doesn’t cause behavior like that.
A rabid dog like the original Cujo’s ultimately a victim that doesn’t mean to do what it does. Brown may be a victim to some degree but he clearly knew enough and did more than enough to forfeit leniency.
This is a good explanation, Neo. Yes, I’ve seen some of the angry or incredulous posts.
One additional point. If he cannot achieve competence to stand trial via medication or “competency training”, the court will need to evaluate the need for civil commitment. If he’s committed, there will be periodic reevaluations.
Here’s the kicker. Neo’s comment includes a link to a summary of the SCOTUS case that defined the standard for competency to stand trial: whether the defendant has “sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding” and a “rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him.”
The standard for ongoing civil commitment is different: If the person is no longer dangerous, they can’t remain civilly committed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Connor_v._Donaldson.
Also, they can’t be held indefinitely due solely to incompetence to stand trial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_v._Indiana
The kicker: A civilly committed person could be found no longer dangerous thanks to the treatment and thus be required to be released but still not meet the standard for competence to stand trial.
There is also the interplay of the fact that first-degree murder has no statute of limitations, and also the possibility that the court could at some point in a long civil commitment process dismiss the case with prejudice. Hopefully in any permutation common sense will prevail.
I’d like to zoom out to the macro level for a moment.
I once did some tedious calculations based on DOJ crime statistics. After normalizing the data by population sizes I concluded:
The likelihood of a Black completing violence against a White is 82x higher than the other way around.
The likelihood of a Black committing sexual assault against a White is more than 20,000x higher than the other way around.
It’s a complicated matter, of course, but as far as I’m concerned, all the people who fan the grievances of blacks against whites are complicit in the violence of a DeCarlos Brown against the blonde, white Iryna Zarutska.
Brown may be crazy, but I doubt he chose to attack Zarutska by pure random chance.
I presume he’s perfectly competent to stand trial. How competent does that have to be, anyway?
But if he did stand trial, what would come out that the locals would prefer remain covered?
Huxley: “It’s a complicated matter, of course, but as far as I’m concerned, all the people who fan the grievances of blacks against whites are complicit in the violence of a DeCarlos Brown against the blonde, white Iryna Zarutska”
…
Amen! Indeed! 100%!
And “all the people” includes, of course, all the political figures who raise money and buy votes by race baiting.
They should literally get jail time.
After three attempted posts similar to huxley’s above were censored, my reaction is: Sad.