Woman accused of Edgewood fire deemed not competent to stand trial

An Edgewood woman accused of setting a fire in 2019 that killed several housemates has been found not competent to stand trial, documents filed in Harford County Circuit Court show.

After evaluation, Bobbie Sue Hodge, 61, was ordered to be committed to a Maryland Department of Health facility. She is to remain there unless the court finds her competent to stand trial or other legal conditions are met, according to assistant public defender Belgin Palaz, an attorney for Hodge.

Hodge was facing multiple counts of first-degree murder, as well arson and a bevy of related charges connected to the May 9, 2019, fire at the Edgewood town house in the 1800 block of Simons Court where she lived with several others. The fire ultimately led to the deaths of four people.

Ernest Milton Lee, 57, Kimberly Ann Shupe, 47, and Dionne Dominique Hill, 32, all lived on the third floor and died in the fire. Two others, Mary Elizabeth Kennedy and Marquise St. John, were injured in the blaze.

Kennedy, 52, suffered burns to over 70% of her body, and was rescued by firefighters from the second floor of the house. She later died from “thermal injuries,” prosecutors said. A grand jury indicted Hodge on a first-degree murder charge related to Kennedy’s death in December.

St. John jumped from a third-story window to escape the flames, breaking an arm and a leg in the process, according to prosecutors.

Hodge’s attorneys said their client had a history of medical problems and was showing “severe memory issues” and “lack of decision making capacity,” and Harford County Circuit Court Judge Paul W. Ishak approved an evaluation of her competency.

Hodges’ trial had been postponed three times since her arrest in July 2019.

State’s Attorney for Harford County Albert Peisinger said an evaluation will be done yearly to determine Hodge’s competency.

Were Hodge found competent at a later date, the litigation would resume from where it stopped when the order was issued in January, Palaz said.

Hodge is accused of setting the fire in the home’s second-floor living room after making “multiple threats” to burn the town house, according to charging documents.

Witnesses said they saw Hodge leave the room where the fire started at the time, and a recorded call from one of the deceased occupants named Hodge as the person who started the fire, the documents state.

Legal competency is the measure of a defendant’s ability to understand the charges against them and assist in their own defense. While sometimes conflated, competency differs from criminal responsibility, which determines if a defendant was unable to appreciate the criminality of their actions or comport their behavior to the requirements of the law at the time of the alleged offense.