COLROADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) — A federal judge has declared Robert Dear, the man who admitted to killing three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015, incompetent to stand trial in the federal case against him.
Dear will now be committed again for hospitalization and treatment for a period of no more than four months to determine if Dear will “attain the capacity to permit the proceedings to move forward.”
A state judge had already ruled Dear was incompetent to stand trial for the local charges against him, and ordered Dear be sent to the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo for treatment.
That judge determined he was too delusional to understand the charges against him or to assist in his defense. That judgment has been affirmed at 90-day intervals since then.
Colorado law allows Dear to be held indefinitely on suspicion of first-degree murder while undergoing treatment.
At a court appearance in December 2015, Dear had outbursts and called himself “guilty” and a “warrior for babies.”