Emily Dalesio reports for AP:
A North Carolina man accused of trying to join al-Qaida-linked fighters in Syria should be forcibly injected with anti-psychotic medication to see if that will make him competent to face trial, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Basit Sheikh faces serious charges that need a trial and prison doctors could medicate him with limited side effects, U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle said in his order. He put the order on hold, however, to allow an expected appeal. Court orders to forcibly medicate a suspect before trial are rare, but at least four similar cases in the appeals court region that includes North Carolina were later overturned.* * *
The hearing was required by a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision that restricts involuntary medication to serious criminal cases in which prosecutors can prove that important governmental interests are at stake and that drugs won't have nasty side effects. Boyle ruled prosecutors satisfied each requirement.The Supreme Court decision referred to is Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003), and Justice Breyer's opinion for the Court does not actually use the word "nasty."
There were only about 77 such cases in federal courts nationwide in the nine years after the Supreme Court ruling through mid-2012, according to a 2013 study by Georgetown University law professor Susan McMahon. Federal district courts approved those motions 63 percent of the time, she said, though several decisions were later reversed.
In one of my few libertarian-leaning moments in the USAO, I was asked to argue for forcibly medicating a defendant so that he could assist in his defense, and I declined, believing that the power of government does not extend that far.
DOJ understood and never held it against me. A colleague took the case and won it with ease.
One of the great pleasures of working for the government in criminal cases is that you never have to say things you don't believe. For me, the moral and psychological difference between that and criminal defense -- where lawyers constantly say things they don't and couldn't believe -- was worth the very substantial difference in pay.