By Joshua Melvin
Contra Costa Times
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — The man accused of raping a fellow patient in a San Mateo County psychiatric ward will be sent back to a state mental hospital because he is not mentally competent to stand trial, attorneys said Friday.
At a hearing Monday, prosecutors will not oppose a defense move to put Ronald O’Brien in the hands of state doctors, said District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.
O’Brien is a danger to himself and others, as evidenced by an alleged assault on a jail guard in August, said defense attorney Paul DeMeester. That attack resulted in a new misdemeanor case being filed against him Wednesday, coming on top of assault charges from a previous attack on jail guards.
The latest incident happened after O’Brien, 28, was sent back to San Mateo County in May following a nearly 10-month stay in Atascadero and Napa state hospitals. Doctors there said his mental health had improved enough for him to stand trial for the alleged rape of a female patient at San Mateo Medical Center in March 2010.
O’Brien is alleged to have climbed on top of the 23-year-old patient as she slept, sexually assaulted her and then warned her to not report the attack.
Despite the state doctors’ opinion, DeMeester said that, after seeing O’Brien, he concluded the man was still mentally unfit for trial. DeMeester wrote in court papers that his client was never competent and claimed O’Brien had been shipped back to make room for new patients.
Several doctors’ reports on O’Brien paint a disturbing picture of someone who hears voices, hallucinates and is considered violent. One doctor noted O’Brien believed, while locked alone in a cell, that someone was cutting his arm and hands.
He also delivered nonsensical monologues on demons, devils and aliens.
After seeing a new doctor’s evaluation of O’Brien at the start of August, DeMeester pushed for his client to be sent back to a state hospital. While the DA’s office dragged its feet on the question of the man’s fitness, DeMeester wrote, O’Brien broke a guard’s hand during an Aug. 28 attack.
“Even though the DA completely shirked his responsibilities in refusing to review the O’Brien incompetency matter, the DA did manage to spend the time charging Mr. O’Brien for having broken (the guard’s hand),” DeMeester wrote.
Wagstaffe said Friday he had two deputy district attorneys working on the case, and it took until now to determine that O’Brien wasn’t fit for trial. “His mental health has declined to the point where, in the opinion of the experts, he is not competent,” Wagstaffe said.
O’Brien remains in San Mateo County Jail, where he is being given medication by forced injection. He refuses to take pills orally, and there is no evidence that he is exaggerating his symptoms, according to doctors’ reports.
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