Evaluations of Urban Sovereign Citizens' Competency to Stand Trial.

There are few studies of sovereign citizens undergoing competency-to-stand-trial evaluations and little has been written about African-American or urban sovereign citizens. In this study, we examined competency-to-stand-trial reports of 36 New York City defendants who declared themselves to be sovereign citizens during their evaluations. All were men and 33 were African American.

Competency to stand trial evaluations in a multicultural population: Associations between psychiatric, demographic, and legal factors.

Data were examined from an archival sample of Competency to Stand Trial (CST) reports of 200 consecutive New York City pre-trial defendants evaluated over a five-month period. Approximately a fourth of defendants in the present study were immigrants; many required the assistance of interpreters. The examiners conducting the CST evaluation diagnosed approximately half of the defendants with a primary diagnosis of a psychotic disorder and deemed over half not competent.