Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Can Alicia Englert, who is charged with leaving her newborn baby in a trash can, be restored to competency to stand trial? Or is her intellectual disability so severe and reasoning skills so poor that she will never be able to fully understand what's happening in court?
That's the question 3rd District Judge Elizabeth Hruby-Mills now has to decide.
Englert, 24, is charged with attempted murder, a first-degree felony, for allegedly giving birth in her Kearns bedroom in secret in August 2014 and then putting the newborn in a neighbor's trash can two days later while on her way to work.
Since then, there has essentially been no progress in the case in more than two years.
Englert has undergone five evaluations and all of them concluded that she is not competent to stand trial. But Englert does not suffer from a mental illness. Rather, she is borderline "intellectual functioning," or intellectually incompetent, evaluators say. She consistently scores about a 65 on her IQ tests.
In court Wednesday, prosecutors argued that they want the judge to allow competency restoration efforts for Englert to continue. They noted that the last evaluations were done in 2015, and that extensive restoration efforts haven't really been tried yet. Salt Lake County deputy district attorney Robert Parrish wants Hruby-Mills to wait until those efforts are completed before making a final determination on whether Englert will ever be fit to stand trial.
But Englert's defense argued Wednesday that there is very little chance that Englert will ever be competent to stand trial.
Some of the requirements for a person to be found competent to stand trial include understanding the charges, understanding the potential penalties, and being able to assist in their own defense.
While Englert can be taught to understand the charges and penalties against her and how to act in court, some of the psychologists who evaluated her testified on Wednesday that she isn't able to assist in her own defense or understand what her attorneys are telling her, and no amount of training will fix that.
"Further training would not change her brain structure to help her learn more effectively," said Summit Community Council Executive Director Karen Malm, who conducted one of the evaluations of Englert.
Malm believes Engert is not competent and not restorable. She can "parrot" information, or be told something enough times that she would able to repeat that answer in court, Malm said. But she is not capable of making reasoned choices, or understand the reasons why she is giving that answer.
There are effective treatments for people with mental illness, Malm said, but "there’s no treatment for reasoning skills."
Malm said she never speaks in extremes, meaning she would never say there is no chance of someone ever being restored to competency. But in Englert's case, it is very unlikely.
"I do not feel she would benefit from more training," Malm said. "It’s a moot point to continue to hammer her with the information."
Parrish, however, believes the two hours that psychologists spent with her are inadequate. He argued the process of predicting whether a person's competency can be restored is flawed and it really isn't known whether a person can be restored until it's tried.
Hruby-Mills took the arguments under advisement and will issue a ruling at a later date. She scheduled a conference call with attorneys for both sides for next week.
