State v. Allen, 377 N.C. 169, 2021-NCSC-38, 856 S.E.2d 494 (Apr. 16, 2021)

In 2015, the defendant was charged with several drug crimes and with having attained habitual felon status. In November 2016, a forensic psychologist evaluated the defendant and determined that he suffered from an intellectual disability, memory impairment, and overall neurological dysfunction, and that he was not capable of proceeding to trial. An evaluation in February 2017 by a forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, reached the same conclusion. After another evaluation in June 2017, however, Dr. Berger concluded that the defendant was capable of proceeding to trial. At the ensuing pretrial competency hearing in August 2017, the trial court determined that the defendant was capable to proceed. The charges came on for trial in February 2018 and the defendant was convicted by a jury of several substantive drug crimes and then pled guilty to having attained habitual felon status. On appeal, a divided panel of the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court erred by failing to conduct another competency hearing before the defendant’s trial began. State v. Allen, 269 N.C. App. 24 (2019). The panel noted that the trial court has a constitutional duty to initiate competency hearings on its own motion if the record contains substantial evidence tending to show that the defendant might not be competent, and that there was such evidence in the defendant’s case, including his history of involuntary commitments, mental health history, significant intellectual disabilities, previous evaluations finding him incapable to proceed, and his mistaken responses to questions the trial judge posed to him at trial. The majority concluded that the evaluation from June 2017 “was not current, and may not have accurately reflected Defendant’s mental state at trial in February 2018,” and remanded the matter to the trial division to determine whether the defendant was competent at the time of trial. The dissent expressed the opinion that there was not “substantial evidence” tending to show the defendant might be incompetent at the time of trial.

On appeal, the Supreme Court considered whether there was substantial evidence sufficient to raise a bona fide doubt concerning the defendant’s competence at the time of trial. The Court reviewed the facts of the case, including the defendant’s mental health history and the course of treatment that ultimately led to the trial court’s determination that he was competent to proceed. The Court noted that, at the time the case was called for trial, neither party made any attempt to revisit the issue of the defendant’s competence. The Court was also unpersuaded that the defendant’s remarks to the trial judge during the plea colloquy on the habitual felon charge were substantial evidence of incompetence. In the absence of substantial evidence, the Court concluded that the trial court was entitled to rely on the pretrial competency determination completed eight months before trial. The Court therefore reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded the case for proceedings not inconsistent with its opinion.