LOS ANGELES – Financier and cricket mogul Allen Stanford is unfit to stand trial on charges of running a seven-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme and needs treatment for a drug addiction, a US judge ruled Wednesday.
“The court finds Stanford is incompetent to stand trial at this time based on his apparent impaired ability to rationally assist his attorneys in preparing his defense,” US District Judge David Hittner wrote in his ruling in Houston, Texas. “The court’s finding that Stanford is incompetent, however, does not alter the court’s finding that Stanford is a flight risk.”
Psychiatrists who testified at a hearing earlier this month concluded that Stanford was suffering from bouts of delirium linked to his dependency on a strong anti-anxiety medication. They also found he was incompetent to stand trial due to a brain injury he sustained during a 2009 jailhouse brawl. Hittner denied a request by Stanford’s lawyers to release him on bond and place him in a private treatment facility for his addiction, ordering him instead to be committed to the custody of the attorney general to “undergo medical treatment for his current impaired mental capacity” and eventually take a competency exam.
The judge also recommended that the flamboyant Texan be sent to a medical facility within the US Bureau of Prisons, namely citing the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, where Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff is currently serving a 150-year term for defrauding investors of $20b.
