A federal judge on Thursday ordered doctors to forcibly medicate the man charged with carrying out a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs abortion clinic nearly a decade ago after he lost a nearly three-year legal battle to stop the treatment, opening up a path for his two long-stalled criminal cases to move forward.
U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered that Robert Dear be involuntarily medicated “as soon as practicable” in the Thursday order, which he issued after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up Dear’s case.
Dear, 66, has admitted to killing three people and wounding nine others during a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs in 2015, but the criminal proceedings against him have been on hold for years as he has been consistently found to be too mentally ill to stand trial.
He faces both state and federal criminal charges in separate cases.
Dear has for years refused medication for his diagnosed mental illnesses, which prompted federal prosecutors in 2022 to seek a court order that he be medicated against his will. At the time, they said such medication was likely to improve Dear’s mental health to a point where the criminal cases against him could go forward.
Blackburn first ordered the forcible medication in September 2022. Dear then challenged the order all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to take up the case Monday.
The judge on Thursday re-ordered that the involuntary medication start as soon as practical, and ordered attorneys to update the court about Dear’s status on June 30. State experts will re-consider Dear’s competency after the new treatment.
A competency evaluation considers whether a criminal defendant is mentally ill or developmentally disabled, and whether that mental illness impedes the defendant’s ability to understand the court process. It centers on two prongs — whether defendants have a factual and rational understanding of the proceedings, and whether defendants are able to consult with their attorneys and assist in their own defenses.
Competency refers only to a defendant’s current mental capacity and is distinct from an insanity defense, which focuses on the defendant’s mental state at the time of the alleged crime.
Experts have previously testified that Dear understood the facts and circumstances of his case but was still incompetent to proceed because he could not assist in his own defense.
Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.