DENVER – A mentally ill man accused of killing three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado in 2015 because he offered abortion services may be forcibly medicated, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit decision upheld an order issued by a federal judge in 2022 allowing Robert Dear, 66, to receive medication for delusional disorder against his will, to try to make him well enough to stand trial.
Dear’s federal public defenders challenged U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn’s involuntary medication order in part because it allows force to also potentially be used to cause Dear to take medication or be monitored for any potential side effects to your physical health.
Dear’s lawyers argued that forcing Dear to be treated for delusional disorder could worsen conditions including untreated high blood pressure and high cholesterol. However, in their appeal, they asserted that Blackburn’s decision to give prison doctors the right to force treatment or monitoring of other illnesses is “miles away” from the limited uses of forced medication allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The defense questioned why Blackburn did not explain why he disregarded the opinions of his experts who testified during a hearing on whether Dear should be forcibly medicated in 2022. But a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit said Blackburn sufficiently explained that he placed greater weight in the opinions of government experts because of their experience restoring defendants’ competency and their personal experience working with Dear.
Dear has already declared himself a “warrior for babies” and also expressed pride in the “success” of his attack on the clinic during one of the many explosions at the beginning of that hearing.
After Dear’s charge was held up in state court because he was repeatedly found mentally incompetent to stand trial, he was charged in federal court in 2019 under the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances Act of 1994.
Two of the people killed in the attack were accompanying 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 Oahu, Hawaii. The third person killed was a police officer from a nearby college, Garrett Swasey, who came to the clinic after hearing there was an active shooter.
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