MAN CHARGED IN TEEN’S ’17 DEATH UNFIT FOR TRIAL
A Navy veteran charged in the September 2017 death of 19-yearold Ashanti Billie will not stand trial due to mental incompetency, a judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson also determined that Eric Brian Brown’s competency can’t be restored, according to a defense attorney on the case.
The ruling came during a Zoom conference held between the judge, prosecutors and defense lawyers, attorney Andrew Protogyrou said. The prosecution did not object to the finding, he said.
Tuesday’s decision does not mean the criminal charges against Brown have been dismissed or that he’ll be released.
Prosecutors said they’ll seek to have him civilly committed during proceedings expected to be heard in North Carolina, where he’s being held in a federal prison medical facility. If successful, Brown likely would be involuntarily committed to a mental health facility.
“The indictment against Brown remains in effect,” a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Norfolk said in a brief statement.
“If he becomes competent in the future, we intend to proceed with his prosecution.”
According to a court document filed by the defense earlier this month, the prison’s chief psychiatrist and mental health experts for the prosecution and defense all agreed that his mental illness is too severe to restore him to competency. To stand trial, a defendant must be able to understand t he charges they face, as well as assist in their own defense.
Brown — who suffers from schizophrenia — was arrested in November 2017, about two months after Billie disappeared from a sandwich shop on Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek.
Brown, 48, was a regular customer of the recently opened business. Billie worked there part-time while also going to school at The Art Institute of Virginia Beach.
Her body was found 11 days after her disappearance, behind a church near Brown’s childhood home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Evidence at the scene indicated she’d also been sexually assaulted, prosecutors said.
Brown was charged in U.S. District Court in Norfolk with kidnapping resulting in death, assault, theft, intent to commit aggravated sexual abuse and stalking. He was charged with murder in state court in North Carolina.
Concerns about his competency were first raised a few weeks after his arrest.
Prosecutors asked that Brown undergo psychological evaluation in response to bizarre behavior he displayed in custody. When prison officials later tried to conduct a hearing at his cell on the issue, he stood motionless and naked in front of the door, holding a sheet in front of his face and body.
Jackson, the judge overseeing the case, ruled in January 2019 he wasn’t competent and ordered that he be sent to a prison medical facility for treatment.
Six months later, the judge granted prosecutor’s request to have him forcibly medicated after learning that he was acting out in prison, had swung chain restraints at a guard, and was not taking care of himself.
The Bureau of Prisons thought he’d been restored in early 2019, but later determined he wasn’t after receiving additional information from defense experts.
Nearly a year later — in December 2019 — government doctors told the court they believed they could have him restored within four months by forcibly injecting him with multiple antipsychotic drugs, according to a document filed recently by the defense. But more than nine months later he remained incompetent, the document said.
“Last week, government doctors finally admitted in internal medical records that this multi-drug regimen is not likely to restore Mr. Brown, and that — in fact — nothing is,” the document said.
Brown served in the Navy for 21 years as an information systems technician. He retired in 2011.
He experienced his first psychotic episode 20 years ago while he was still in the Navy, court records show.
He was hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia at the time.
He suffered a second one in 2011 or 2012, when his sister reported he was exhibiting paranoid behavior and sought to have him involuntarily committed, the document said.
When the Blimpie shop at the Navy base opened in August 2017, Brown became a regular customer, visiting almost every day, according to some of Billie’s coworkers.
Billie worked as an assistant manager and was scheduled to open the shop the day she disappeared. Brown stopped coming in after she went missing, the co-workers said.
Billie’s death later led to the passage of the Ashanti Alert Act, a national public safety alert that’s issued for missing adults between the ages of 18 and 65.