Today the Iowa Supreme Court threw out lower court rulings concerning the case of a 30-year-old Fort Dodge man in Wright County District Court charged with 1st degree murder. The state alleged Lukouxs Brown stabbed 50-year-old Wayne Smith, also of Fort Dodge, on February 16th, 2021. Smith was found dead inside the employee locker room of the Prestage Foods plant.
In 2021, the district court found that Brown was not competent to stand trial and ordered him to undergo mental health treatment designed to restore him to competency. After eight months of treatment, the treatment provider reported to the court that Brown remained not competent to stand trial and that there was no substantial probability that Brown could be restored within a reasonable amount of time. In today’s opinion, the Iowa Supreme Court says the district court allowed the state more time to obtain a separate psychiatric evaluation, which concluded Brown as competent, when the district court should have first held a dispositional hearing on the matter within 14 days. That hearing did not take place for more than 90 days. The supreme court says that the district court erred in allowing the state to obtain a separate evaluation and in considering the separate evaluation at the dispositional phase of the proceedings.
