Post by CCADP on Aug 26, 2005 17:48:29 GMT -5
Judge rules Baumruk competent for new trial
By Valerie Schremp Hahn
Of the Post-Dispatch
08/26/2005
A St. Charles County judge ruled today that Kenneth Baumruk is mentally competent to stand trial for a 1992 St. Louis County courthouse shooting rampage.
Circuit Judge Lucy Rauch has read hundreds of pages of medical and legal documents since a mental competency hearing for Baumruk in June. She will preside over his trial, a date for which will be set in a couple weeks.
“Kenneth Baumruk does not suffer from psychosis or mental disease that prevents him from cooperating or assisting in his defense if he so chooses,” Rauch wrote.
Baumruk, 66, was already convicted and sentenced to death row in 2001 for killing his wife and shooting four others at a divorce hearing. The next year, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the case should not have been tried in the same courthouse where the shootings happened, and it granted a new trial.
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This was Baumruk’s fourth appearance before a judge for a mental competency hearing. In 1994 and 1995, a Macon County judge found Baumruk incompetent to stand trial. In 2000, after prosecutors refiled the charges, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Mark Siegel found Baumruk competent.
Baumruk’s lawyers said he suffers from dementia because police shot him twice in the head to stop the rampage, and he had brain surgery afterwards. They said Baumruk cannot help in his defense because he claims he does not remember what happened from the time he sat down in the courtroom to the point he was being transferred to jail from the hospital. They said Baumruk can’t tell them his motives, intent and mental state at the time of the shooting.
Prosecutors said Baumruk’s memory loss is selective, and he is competent. For example, Baumruk could remember getting picked up by his son at the airport in St. Louis and going to dinner with two women in the days before the hearing, but he could not remember packing guns and ammunition in his suitcase.
In her ruling, Rauch noted she does not have to determine whether Baumruk is faking amnesia or even determine the extent of his memory loss. It is irrelevant whether he can tell his attorneys what he was thinking at the time of the shooting, and he has a motive to lie about his condition, she wrote.
“Kenneth Baumruk has the mental capabilities to review all of the facts of this incident, including any facts, which may give rise to a defense, in order to accurately reconstruct his actions in this case where his memory may be lacking,” she wrote.
Reporter Valerie Schremp Hahn
E-mail: vschremp@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 636-255-7211
By Valerie Schremp Hahn
Of the Post-Dispatch
08/26/2005
A St. Charles County judge ruled today that Kenneth Baumruk is mentally competent to stand trial for a 1992 St. Louis County courthouse shooting rampage.
Circuit Judge Lucy Rauch has read hundreds of pages of medical and legal documents since a mental competency hearing for Baumruk in June. She will preside over his trial, a date for which will be set in a couple weeks.
“Kenneth Baumruk does not suffer from psychosis or mental disease that prevents him from cooperating or assisting in his defense if he so chooses,” Rauch wrote.
Baumruk, 66, was already convicted and sentenced to death row in 2001 for killing his wife and shooting four others at a divorce hearing. The next year, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the case should not have been tried in the same courthouse where the shootings happened, and it granted a new trial.
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This was Baumruk’s fourth appearance before a judge for a mental competency hearing. In 1994 and 1995, a Macon County judge found Baumruk incompetent to stand trial. In 2000, after prosecutors refiled the charges, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Mark Siegel found Baumruk competent.
Baumruk’s lawyers said he suffers from dementia because police shot him twice in the head to stop the rampage, and he had brain surgery afterwards. They said Baumruk cannot help in his defense because he claims he does not remember what happened from the time he sat down in the courtroom to the point he was being transferred to jail from the hospital. They said Baumruk can’t tell them his motives, intent and mental state at the time of the shooting.
Prosecutors said Baumruk’s memory loss is selective, and he is competent. For example, Baumruk could remember getting picked up by his son at the airport in St. Louis and going to dinner with two women in the days before the hearing, but he could not remember packing guns and ammunition in his suitcase.
In her ruling, Rauch noted she does not have to determine whether Baumruk is faking amnesia or even determine the extent of his memory loss. It is irrelevant whether he can tell his attorneys what he was thinking at the time of the shooting, and he has a motive to lie about his condition, she wrote.
“Kenneth Baumruk has the mental capabilities to review all of the facts of this incident, including any facts, which may give rise to a defense, in order to accurately reconstruct his actions in this case where his memory may be lacking,” she wrote.
Reporter Valerie Schremp Hahn
E-mail: vschremp@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 636-255-7211