McCarrick’s lawyers say he lacks mental competence to stand trial
Attorneys for Theodore McCarrick told a Massachusetts court on Monday that the former cardinal has dementia and is not mentally competent to stand trial.
They asked the court to dismiss the sexual assault charges against McCarrick.
Prosecutors say they will hire their own expert to conduct a second evaluation of the 92-year-old former cardinal, the Associated Press reports.
McCarrick, 92, has pleaded not guilty to sexually molesting a 16-year-old-boy during a wedding reception at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1974. He faces three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14. Each criminal count carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment in Massachusetts.
While numerous allegations of sexual abuse have surfaced against McCarrick over the last five years, and he has been found guilty in a Vatican administrative penal process, the Massachusetts case is the only criminal case against him. Many of the other allegations against McCarrick have fallen beyond state statutes of limitation, effectively preventing his prosecution in state courts.
In Massachusetts, McCarrick was able to be criminally charged with alleged assaults from 1974 because he was not a state resident and the statute of limitations’ time period for prosecution was paused when he left the state.
McCarrick’s attorneys had said in a motion last month that he was being examined by Dr. David Schretlen, a psychiatry and behavioral science professor from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
