OAKLAND — Prison proceedings are being suspended over the killing of a well-liked youth mentor and coach, so {that a} psychological well being skilled can consider the accused killer, court docket information present.
At a September court docket listening to, the deputy public defender for 39-year-old Daniel Stith brazenly declared a doubt to Stith’s psychological competence for trial, kicking off a authorized course of the place a psychiatrist should now consider Stith and report her findings to a choose. Stith was not current for the listening to, having refused to depart his Santa Rita Jail cell, in accordance with court docket paperwork.
Stith was charged in 2021 with killing Harmony resident Reuben Lewis III, 37, at a soccer observe attended by greater than 100 folks and kids at Concordia Park in Oakland. Lewis was a former AAU basketball coach, and the neighborhood responded to his demise with an enormous outpouring of grief, together with a vigil attended by then-Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and then-police Chief LeRonne Armstrong.
Questions have been raised about Stith’s psychological state on the time of the Feb. 24, 2021 taking pictures since Stith’s preliminary listening to final yr, the place the weird circumstances throughout and after the taking pictures have been publicly revealed. A resident of close by Greenly Drive testified that Stith confirmed as much as her house after the taking pictures, stripped bare, left an envelope with $900 there and informed her to name the police.
“‘I believe I killed somebody. I killed somebody, I killed somebody,” Stith informed her, she testified. Hours later, he turned himself in on the San Leandro Police Division.
Others who have been current for the taking pictures testified that Stith — a youth soccer coach and rapper who used the stage identify Danny from Sobrante — appeared “off” on the observe. Decide Morris Jacobson stated his habits advised “some degree of an episode of psychological sickness,” however held Stith to reply on costs of homicide and being a felon in possession of a firearm, court docket information present.
Stith’s habits on the jail has been irrational too, in accordance with court docket information. In August 2021, he was charged with a felony for allegedly punching Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Troy Olson contained in the Santa Rita Jail. The possible trigger assertion alleges Stith punched the deputy with out provocation or warning on April 25, 2021, loosening three tooth within the deputy’s jawline.
If Stith is discovered mentally incompetent for court docket, it can start a authorized and medical course of that’s notoriously sluggish in California. He’ll be ordered transferred from the jail to a psychological establishment — regardless of a statewide backlog and hospital mattress scarcity that usually leaves folks lingering of their cells for months — the place docs will try and “restore” his sanity.
As soon as a felony defendant’s psychological competence has been returned, she or he is as soon as once more introduced again to jail and the felony proceedings choose up the place they left off.