AUGUSTA — The Gardiner man accused of dismembering his father is still not competent to stand trial for murder, and is asking that his lawyers be fired and they not be allowed to contact him.
Leroy Smith III, 24, indicted on charges of murder, will remain at the Riverview Psychiatric Center.
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Smith was scheduled for arraignment and a status conference Tuesday in Kennebec County Superior Court, but he is being kept under observation in the forensic unit at the state mental health hospital.
His defense attorneys, Pam Ames and Scott Hess, had asked a judge to postpone the hearing and said their motion was unopposed by the state. Justice Donald Marden granted that continuance Tuesday.
In Smith’s current circumstances, “he would be unable to enter a plea,” Hess wrote in a request to Marden.
Ames has requested Smith be evaluated for “insanity, abnormal condition of mind and mental condition.”
Meanwhile, Smith asked that Ames and Hess be removed as his court-appointed lawyers and wants a court order preventing them from contacting him.
“My case is demanding though the facts will never get disproven,” Smith wrote in a hand-printed letter to the court, requesting his lawyers be fired. “After these few weeks of thoughtful rest, I am letting everything out, hence my last message for the court.”
He continued, “I demand a professional lawyering team that investigates my case and life in full.”
Hess did not respond Tuesday when asked whether a judge was likely to change attorneys at the request of someone who is found mentally incompetent.
Ames previously told the court that Ann LeBlanc, director of the State Forensic Service, “advised me to make sure the court committed Mr. Smith after the preliminary finding of incompetence for observation and treatment as she did not believe Mr. Smith would become competent without treatment.”
Smith was indicted on a charge of intentional or knowing or depraved indifference murder in the May 3 stabbing death and dismemberment of Leroy Smith Jr., 56, in the Gardiner apartment the two men shared.
Police say the younger Smith rented a carpet cleaner to hide signs of the killing and took his father’s money and car.
The younger Smith was arrested May 5 in Westbrook after he flagged down a police officer to ask for directions to a strip club that had operated briefly several years previously. Police discovered Smith was wanted on a Massachusetts warrant charging him with harassment.
After he was taken to Cumberland County Jail, Smith allegedly told officers he had killed his father and “filleted him and buried him in the woods because his dad sexually assaulted him his whole life,” according to an affidavit by Maine State Police Detective Jonah O’Roak. Smith referred to himself in discussions with police as God and said he was affiliated with Hells Angels, according to the affidavit.
Police found the father’s mutilated remains in trash bags that Smith told them he dumped in Richmond. Investigators also searched the woods for explosives that the younger Smith claimed to have planted in the area, but no devices were found.
After Smith’s first court appearance, he yelled to assembled news media that he was a “political prisoner being held as a patient.”
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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