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Competency evaluation ordered for murder defendant

Trial put on hold for Russell’s meds

-Messenger photo by Elijah Decious
Defense attorney Charles Kenville speaks with client Mark Russell at a competency hearing in March. The defendant is charged with first-degree murder after police say he killed his ex-girlfriend’s mother in January.

A competency evaluation has been ordered for the man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend’s mother with a golf club, temporarily suspending his first-degree murder trial.

At a Thursday hearing, Chief District Court Judge Kurt Wilke ordered Mark Russell, 28, to be sent to Iowa Medical Classification Center (Oakdale) in Coralville for an evaluation and any necessary treatment to restore the defendant to competency to face trial.

Russell was charged after Angela McLeod, 45, was found dead in her North 14th Street home Jan. 20 following an apparent altercation that Fort Dodge police responded to twice.

Defense attorney Charles Kenville said that Russell, whose schizophrenia diagnosis is accompanied by a history of examples that can speak to his psychoses and detachment from reality, has been “up and down” in their meetings to prepare for trial.

“He sometimes tracks things, and sometimes doesn’t follow the case or procedures against him,” Kenville said.

Prior to arraignment, he said Russell sent two letters saying he wanted to plead guilty because he could “better fight the case from inside the prison.”

“Those two ideas, those two concepts don’t compute,” Kenville said. “You can’t both plead guilty, go to prison and continue to defend yourself against the charges.”

A subsequent letter from the defendant did a complete turn, saying he wanted to plead not guilty.

Kenville cited several examples of Russell’s history struggling with schizophrenia symptoms, including an instance with a Sac City police officer in December and another instance of believing someone who had been gone from his home for a few days was still around.

A December interaction with law enforcement in Sac City resulted in the defendant being taken to Loring Hospital for a mental health evaluation, where the officer apparently told hospital staff that she believed Russell was having auditory hallucinations. Russell was released from prison in December, just three weeks prior to that incident.

“Body camera video from that incident records the defendant making statements that he believed ‘people were after him’ and other statements consistent with a serious mental illness,” said Kenville in a prior motion. “The defendant stated he was ‘scared’ and requested ‘help’ from a Sac City police officer.”

The Cerro Gordo County defense attorney said that once the defendant is properly medicated — something he said is not happening in Webster County Jail, for an unspecified reason — that the trial can “proceed as normal.”

The state did not resist the motion.

“The state believes there are specific facts … to justify the court suspending further proceedings,” said Webster County Attorney Darren Driscoll, noting that there is a waiting list for evaluations at Oakdale.

An arraignment has been scheduled for March 16; it is unclear if that will be rescheduled. Requesting a competency evaluation or treatment to restore a defendant to competency is not the same as an “insanity plea” strategy done during the course of a criminal trial, and does not absolve a defendant of charges against them.

According to the witness that called 911 the morning McLeod died, Russell said to McLeod that she “wasn’t going to leave the bedroom alive” that day. The witness told police that Russell had threatened to kill the victim before.

Upon Russell’s arrest, criminal complaints surfaced several incriminating statements allegedly made by him both on the scene and in subsequent interviews.

Police said that during an interview with the defendant, he claimed responsibility for the injuries McLeod sustained before her death, saying that he struck McLeod at least three times with the golf club. He said that at least one of those strikes was in the face while she was on the ground. Police found the golf club with its head detached in the home.

“I’m going to kill this b—-,” is what Russell said was going through his mind during the assault, according to the complaints, which depict a gruesome narrative of the victim choking on her own blood.

Russell, who was released from prison just six weeks before he was charged with murder, has been in and out of jail and prison several times since 2012, according to the Iowa Department of Corrections. Charges he served time for were aggravated or serious misdemeanors.

Previous criminal complaints include acts of assaulting a Fort Dodge police officer, assaulting an intimate partner with a knife, weapons charges and stealing a car.

Mental health evaluations and treatment have been incorporated as stipulations of various sentences to Russell’s previous convictions.

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