Judge: Dorothy June Brown competent to stand trial

A federal judge has ruled that charter school founder Dorothy June Brown is competent to be retried on charges that she defrauded the schools of $6.3 million.

Judge R. Barclay Surrick, who presided over Brown's first trial and a competency hearing in January, filed his decision Wednesday. No new trial date has been set.

Brown's attorneys had asked the court to find that the 77-year-old career educator had memory impairments that would prevent her from assisting with her defense.

Her lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brown, who founded three small charter schools in Philadelphia and a cyber school in the suburbs, is charged with scheming to defraud the schools and conspiring with four other administrators to cover up the alleged crimes.

Two codefendants pleaded guilty and testified against Brown during her trial, from October 2013 to January 2014. Brown was acquitted on six counts, and jurors deadlocked on dozens of others, causing prosecutors to seek a retrial.

Surrick said he based Wednesday's decision on testimony from the competency hearing and the findings of three of the five medical experts who examined Brown - including testimony from a forensic psychologist who evaluated Brown during a court-ordered stay of 29 days at a federal medical center in Fort Worth, Texas.

The judge said that while the experts agreed that Brown displayed some memory loss, they disagreed on what caused it.

Two defense experts said Brown might be exhibiting early stages of dementia.

The court-appointed experts said Brown's problems remembering dates and details could stem from the stress of her federal criminal case, which she had described as "traumatic."

Surrick said he also suspected that "at least some level of memory loss was exaggeration."

He wrote: "The evidence and testimony presented at the competency hearing demonstrate that defendant is able to understand the nature and consequences of her criminal proceeding and is presently able to consult with her attorneys with a reasonable degree of rational understanding."

Surrick said he also relied on what he had seen in his courtroom.

"We have observed defendant in the courtroom over the course of almost two years," he wrote. "In that time, we have seen nothing about her behavior that would suggest that she failed to understand the charges against her or was unable to assist her counsel in her defense."

Surrick pointed out that defense attorneys raised the issue of Brown's competency less than a month before she was scheduled to be retried in September. He also noted that her lawyers had not taken an opportunity offered by the court to submit an affidavit or testify about their concerns about Brown's cognitive abilities.

Surrick had ordered Brown to undergo psychiatric and mental-competency exams after her attorneys raised the competency issue in the fall.