Mentally ill man charged in Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting can be forcibly medicated
DENVER — A mentally ill man accused of killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015 because it offered abortion services can be forcibly medicated, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit affirmed an injunction issued by a federal judge in 2022 causing Robert Dear, 66, to be medicated against his will for a delusional disorder in an attempt to make him sane enough to stand trial.
Dear’s federal public defenders have challenged U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn’s involuntary medication order in part because it also allows force to be used to get Dear to take medication or be monitored for possible side effects to his physical health.
Dear’s attorneys have argued that forcing Dear to be treated for a delusional disorder could worsen conditions including untreated high blood pressure and high cholesterol. However, in their appeal, they said Blackburn’s decision to give prison doctors the right to compel treatment or monitoring for other conditions is “miles away” from the limited use of coercive medication allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The defense questioned why Blackburn did not explain why he overruled the opinions of her experts who testified at a hearing on whether Dear should be force-medicated in 2022. But a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit said Blackburn had sufficiently explained that he placed greater weight on the opinions of the government’s experts because of their experience restoring defendants’ competency and their personal experience working with Dear.
Dear has previously declared himself a “warrior of the babies” and also expressed pride in the “success” of his attack on the clinic during one of several outbursts at the start of that hearing.
After Dear’s prosecution stalled in state court because he was repeatedly found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial, he was charged in federal court in 2019 under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994.
Two of the people killed in the attack accompanied friends to the clinic: Ke’Arre Stewart, 29, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and a father of two, and Jennifer Markovsky, 36, a mother of two who grew up in Iraq. Oahu, Hawaii. The third person killed was a campus police officer from a nearby university, Garrett Swasey, who responded to the clinic after hearing there was an active shooter.