Vermont v. Boyajian
Annotate this CaseIn an interlocutory appeal, the issue presented for the Vermont Supreme Court's review was whether the superior court erred by denying the State’s request to order a psychiatric evaluation of defendant Brent Boyajian before holding a competency hearing. In November 2019, the State charged defendant with burglary of an occupied dwelling, misdemeanor possession of stolen property, and simple assault of a protected professional. Defendant subsequently filed a motion to suppress evidence but asked the court to delay holding a hearing on the motion to allow defense counsel time to determine defendant’s competency to stand trial, indicating that he planned to hire an expert. At a status conference, defense counsel explained that defendant was raising the issue of competency because he had a significant traumatic brain injury and recently suffered an aneurysm. For this reason, counsel noted that defendant was being evaluated by a medical provider with a memory clinic that could perform neurological testing. The experts’ report concluded that “although [defendant] has many specific capacities necessary for adjudicative competence, his limitations in verbal memory and other aspects of cognitive processing are likely to create significant problems effectively communicating with counsel and assisting in his defense.” The experts opined that defendant was therefore not competent to stand trial. The State then filed its own motion for psychiatric evaluation, contending the court should not rely only on defendant's evaluation to determine competency. The court denied the State's request. On appeal to the Supreme Court, the State contended that 13 V.S.A. 4817(b) required the trial court to order an evaluation before holding a competency hearing when the court has reason to believe that a defendant may be incompetent due to mental disease or defect, and an evaluation by a defense-retained expert did not satisfy this requirement. To this the Supreme Court agreed, and therefore reversed and remanded for further proceedings.
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