Judge orders involuntary medication of conspiracy theorist charged with killing kids in Rosarito
A San Diego federal judge has ordered prison officials to involuntarily medicate a conspiracy theorist charged with killing his two young children in Mexico in an attempt to restore his competency to stand trial.
However, U.S. District Judge Cathy Bencivengo issued an immediate stay of her order to allow Matthew Taylor Coleman’s defense team to appeal the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Coleman, a 43-year-old Santa Barbara surf school owner who allegedly killed his infant and toddler in 2021 while paranoid and obsessed with QAnon and other conspiracy theories, was found in late 2023 to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. Federal prosecutors have sought permission over the past year to medicate Coleman involuntarily in order to restore his mental competency, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is legal under certain conditions, though many of the specific arguments for and against the medication plan have been filed under seal.
Coleman’s defense team filed a notice of appeal on Friday, a day after Bencivengo’s ruling. His attorneys did not respond Monday to messages seeking comment on the ruling or their appeal.
Coleman has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of murdering U.S. nationals on foreign soil for the slayings of his 2-year-old son, Kaleo, and 10-month-old daughter, Roxy. Authorities allege that in August 2021, Coleman drove the children to Mexico and shot them with a spearfishing gun. Their bodies were discovered in a ditch off a Rosarito highway.
According to court records, Coleman has admitted to the killings in detailed confessions during law enforcement interviews, and his wife told investigators that the couple had delved into the sprawling QAnon conspiracy together. Coleman eventually became paranoid by a mix of conspiracy theories, even believing that his wife had passed serpent blood from “lizard people” on to their children, according to the court records.
In 2023, Bencivengo ruled Coleman was not competent to stand trial and ordered him to be committed for treatment. Bureau of Prisons records show he remains in custody at a federal medical prison facility in Missouri.
Most of the court records regarding his competency remain sealed, but prosecutors wrote in a filing last year that Coleman was committed because “evidence suggested he has a mental disease or defect and cannot understand the proceedings or help his defense.” A prison doctor who evaluated Coleman for 21 weeks last year “thinks he meets the … criteria for Unspecified Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorder and is not competent to proceed or make decisions in his case,” the prosecutors wrote. Coleman did not participate in the evaluations.
Citing the prison doctor’s report, prosecutors wrote last year that “this is a chronic condition that probably will not remit without antipsychotic medication.”
The government attorneys also wrote that while in custody in 2022, Coleman “cut himself with a razor, dove headfirst into a toilet, punched himself in the face, and slammed his head into the floor.” Despite those incidents, an administrative hearing officer from the Bureau of Prisons ruled Coleman was not a danger to himself or others and decided not to medicate Coleman under a different law.
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Bencivengo made her ruling last week during what’s known as a
Sell
hearing, so-named for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003
in
Sell v. United States
that held that the federal government can administer antipsychotic drugs to a defendant under certain limited circumstances.
According to that ruling, judges must find that four requirements are met before involuntarily medicating a defendant. The first has to do with whether important government interests are at stake. The other three requirements deal with the medication itself and determining whether treatment will be effective, whether there are any alternative and less-intrusive treatments available and whether the administration of the drug is medically appropriate.
Bencivengo ruled the government met all four requirements, but now the 9th Circuit will evaluate the case.
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